The Union Ministry of Home Affairs has said it has “no information to furnish” about undocumented Bangladeshi immigrants in Jharkhand, The Telegraph reported on Friday.

“Data of such illegal Bangladeshi citizens including their activities during staying in the country is not centrally available”, the Centre said in response to a Right to Information application filed by Ranchi-based social activist Siraj Dutta.

In the run-up to Assembly polls in Jharkhand earlier this year, several Bharatiya Janata Party leaders 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.

The Hindutva party has frequently sought to push unsubstantiate claims of large-scale undocumented immigration from Bangladesh as the driving force behind demographic changes in the state, particularly in the Santhal Parganas administrative division comprising six districts: Godda, Deoghar, Dumka, Jamtara, Sahibganj and Pakur.

A Scroll investigation has found such claims to be false.

Dutta, a member of the Jharkhand Janadhikar Mahasabha – a coalition of rights organizations in Jharkhand – shared the home ministry’s responses with the media on Thursday evening, claiming that the BJP had “spread the lie of Bangladeshi infiltration during the Jharkhand elections to polarise religion”.

A copy of the RTI reply shared by Jharkhand Janadhikar Mahasabha.

The Centre’s reply dated November 6 said that the information Dutta sought could be “available with the Bureau of Immigration” and “director (F) foreigners division”.

However, Dutta shared responses from both departments saying that the information did not pertain to them.

Dutta also claimed that he had filed his initial Right to Information application on October 4, after which he approached various departments of the home ministry for three months without receiving any information regarding his request, according to The Times of India.

“Bharatiya Janata Party senior leaders including the prime minister had claimed that there were lakhs of Bangladeshi infiltrators in the state,” Dutta told The Telegraph. “Even now many Bharatiya Janata Party leaders are singing the same tune. But the Union home ministry replies itself has exposed the hollowness of their claims.”

On November 11, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said that the Bharatiya Janata Party would form a committee to “identify and drive out infiltrators” from Jharkhand if the party was voted to power in the state. He also accused the Chief Minister Hemant Soren-led Jharkhand Mukti Morcha government of “patronising Bangladeshi infiltrators”.

A BJP campaign video even showed men in skull-caps and women in burqas invading a bungalow of a Jharkhand Mukti Morcha supporter. The Election Commission of India asked the party to take down the video, which it said violated the poll conduct rules.

In October, BJP MP Nishikant Dubey claimed that “Bangladeshi infiltrators” were responsible for an allegedly disproportionate increase in the share of Muslims in the population of the Santhal Parganas area.

The Jharkhand Mukti Morcha-led alliance won 56 seats in the 81-seat Assembly during the state elections while the Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies won 24 seats. The Jharkhand Loktantrik Krantikari Morcha won a single seat.

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