Bharatiya Janata Party Vice President Om Prakash Mathur on Sunday said that his party would implement the National Register of Citizens throughout the country after the Lok Sabha elections next year, reported PTI.

The move will help India get rid of the “problem” of infiltrators, he said. “The country will not be allowed to become a ‘dharamshala’ and the NRC will be implemented across the country after 2019,” Mathur said at an event in Rajasthan’s Jhunjhunu district.

“On the topic of the NRC, nowhere in the world can an infiltrator come to a country and make it his/her permanent home,” said Mathur. “All over the country, Indian citizens are suffering due to the problem of infiltration. There is not a single village or city where there are no Bangladeshi infiltrators.”

Mathur claimed that the NRC was not the BJP’s idea. “The NRC was started by Indira Gandhi and its seed was sown by Rajiv Gandhi,” he said. “They [the United Progressive Alliance] were in power for 10 years but did not have the courage to implement it.” He said that Congress President Rahul Gandhi had been disloyal to his own family for not implementing the NRC.

On July 30, the Assam government had published the final draft of the NRC, which left out 40 lakh people out of 3.29 crore applicants. The exercise led to a war of words between the BJP-led Central government and several Opposition parties, with West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee claiming that it was “a plan to throw out Bengali-speaking people and Biharis”.