Bharatiya Janata Party MP Nishikant Dubey on Sunday claimed that “Bangladeshi infiltrators” were responsible for an allegedly disproportionate increase in the share of Muslims in the population of the Santhal Parganas, reported ANI.

Dubey also reiterated his party’s claim that the share of Adivasis in the region’s population has been declining due to infiltration by Bangladeshis. He did not provide evidence for the allegation.

The Santhal Parganas administrative division comprises six districts: Godda, Deoghar, Dumka, Jamtara, Sahibganj and Pakur.

The Union government in September acknowledged before the High Court that the share of Adivasis in the region’s population had decreased, but did not attribute this to “infiltration” from Bangladesh. The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance is in power at the Centre.

Despite this, Dubey – who represents the Godda constituency – claimed on Sunday: “In 1951, the population of Muslims [in the region] was 9%, today it is 24%. Throughout the country, Muslims have increased by 4% and in our Santhal Pargana, it has increased by 15%. These 11% are Bangladeshi infiltrators and the government of Jharkhand is accepting this.”

Dubey said that neither the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha nor the Congress were concerned “even if the Adivasi share of the population declines, if Adivasis die or if Adivasis are displaced”. He claimed that for the BJP, this was a matter of national importance and not a poll plank.

Assembly elections in Jharkhand will take place in two phases on November 13 and November 20. The votes will be counted on November 23. The BJP is seeking to defeat the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha-Congress coalition that came to power in the state in 2019.

In recent years, the Hindutva party has frequently sought to push claims of large-scale undocumented immigration from Bangladesh as the driving force behind demographic changes in the region.

In 2022, a BJP worker from Jharkhand filed a petition before the High Court claiming that the proportion of Scheduled Tribes in the division was declining due to “illegal infiltrators from Bangladesh” who were marrying into Adivasi families to acquire land and influence. A Scroll investigation has found such claims to be false.

Also read: BJP claims Muslims are marrying Adivasi women to grab land in Jharkhand. The claims don’t add up

On September 12, the Centre told the court in an affidavit that there had indeed been a “drop in tribal population” in the area. While the government said that undocumented immigrants from Bangladesh had been entering the area since Independence, it also highlighted other possible reasons for the decline in the share of the Adivasi population.

“The quantum of decrease in tribal population due to outward migration, low child birth rate among tribals, conversion to Christianity and other reasons also needs (sic) to be assessed,” the home ministry’s affidavit had said, according to The Indian Express.

The government said that there had been instances of Muslims acquiring land through loopholes in land transfer laws and that there had been an altercation between Adivasis and Muslims on this subject in July.

“However, linkages to Bangladeshi immigrants in any of these land-related cases have not been established so far,” it had said.

Dubey has made similar claims without evidence on earlier occasions as well. In July, he claimed that 100 Adivasi women mukhiyas in the state were married to Muslims.

In a similar vein, Asha Lakra, a BJP politician and member of the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes, claimed that 10 elected Adivasi women representatives in nine panchayats in Sahibganj were married to “Bangladeshi infiltrators, Rohingya Muslims”.

Scroll has found that four of the 10 cases Lakra cited were false. Three of the women had Adivasi husbands. The fourth had married outside the Adivasi community but her husband is a Hindu, not Muslim.

In six cases where Adivasi women panchayat leaders were indeed married to Muslims, all of them told Scroll they had married out of choice.

Also read: How the BJP is trying to exploit Adivasis’ anxieties in Jharkhand for electoral gain