Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Monday issued a warning against “strange people” visiting the state from other parts of the country, stating that the government is monitoring their activities and will arrest them if they “cross limits”, PTI reported.

“They had also come when the NRC [National Register of Citizens] was being updated in the state, and spoiled the entire exercise,” the news agency quoted the Bharatiya Janata Party leader as saying. “During the NRC process, the government did not pay much attention to these visits, but now we are keeping an eye on each one of them, and if they step beyond the limits of the rules, they will be arrested.”

Sarma alleged that these individuals, reportedly coming from Kerala, Mumbai, and Delhi, were involved in “fundamentalist activities”.

He referred to Irfan Engineer, director of the Mumbai-based Centre for Study of Society and Secularism, along with advocate Neha Dabhade, both of whom are in Assam as part of a fact-finding team looking into evictions in the state that have largely targeted Muslim communities.

Sarma also revived concerns about the National Register of Citizens, claiming that false entries had been created due to the influence of certain individuals, including human rights activist Harsh Mander.

The National Register of Citizens was updated in Assam in 2019, after a mammoth scrutiny of ancestral family documents to weed out “illegal immigrants”, and ended up excluding 19 lakh residents of the state. The updated list, however, has not been notified six years on.

Sarma on Monday also confirmed that a BBC team was recently denied entry into a forest area in Uriamghat, the site of Assam’s largest eviction drive, PTI reported.

“We had made it absolutely clear that to enter the forest, one would need prior permission,” he said. “We are taking actions bravely this time, and we will not allow any individual or group to take advantage of these issues.”

Between 2016, when the Bharatiya Janata Party government came to power, and now, 15,270 families – the majority of them Muslim – have been evicted from government land, according to data provided by the state revenue and disaster management department. At least eight Muslims have been shot dead during evictions carried out since 2016.

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