Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday said that the Bharatiya Janata Party would form a committee to “identify and drive out infiltrators” from Jharkhand if the party is voted to power in the upcoming Assembly elections, PTI reported.

Addressing a rally in Seraikela Kharsawan district, Shah also promised to introduce legislation to prevent the transfer of land to “infiltrators” who marry Adivasi women in the state.

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

“Tribal population is declining in Jharkhand,” Shah claimed. “Infiltrators are grabbing land by marrying our daughters.”

Shah also accused the ruling Jharkhand Mukti Morcha government of “patronising Bangladeshi infiltrators”, according to PTI.

Voting for the Jharkhand Assembly polls will be held in two phases on November 13 and November 20. The counting of votes will take place on November 23, alongside that of the Maharashtra Assembly elections.

In the run-up to the polls, several BJP leaders have alleged that “Bangladeshi infiltrators” were marrying Adivasi women to grab their land and property, and to use them as proxies to gain power in the region.

A Scroll investigation has found such claims to be false.

In its manifesto, the BJP also pledged to return land allegedly occupied by “infiltrators” to the state’s Adivasis. The document added that the children of “infiltrators” who marry Adivasis would not be recognised as Adivasis.

Asha Lakra, a BJP politician and member of the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes, had also claimed that ten Adivasi women elected 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, Kapra Tudu, had married outside the Adivasi community, but her husband, Nitin Saha, is 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. “The Indian constitution gives us the freedom to marry whom we please,” one said.

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.

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