Prime Minister Narendra Modi has personally assured his Bangladesh counterpart Sheikh Hasina that people excluded from the National Register of Citizens in Assam will not be deported, Hasina’s Advisor HT Imam told The Hindu on Thursday.

“Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi personally assured our premier that those who were excluded from the list under the NRC exercise will not be sent to Bangladesh,” Imam said. “We have been repeatedly assured by India that no such thing [deportation] will happen to create any sort of political instability in Bangladesh, particularly when we are approaching our national elections by the end of the year.”

Imam added that Indian High Commissioner to Dhaka Harsh Vardhan Sringla also “repeatedly told us not to worry about the exercise”.

Imam said that Partition had caused massive migration on both sides of the border. “But once the exchange of population took place during Partition, people who settled on either of the sides became citizens of the country where they migrated,” PTI quoted him as saying.“You can see Bengalis who migrated to India from here are in leading positions in India’s economic, cultural, professional and political arenas. But should they be treated as intruders and sent back to Bangladesh?”

The final draft of the National Register of Citizens was published on July 30, but it excluded some 40 lakh people. On September 11, Bharatiya Janata Party National General Secretary Ram Madhav said people whose names are not in the final list will be disenfranchised and deported.

Meanwhile, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra told The Hindu on Thursday that the law demands that illegal immigrants be deported. Patra reportedly said he was not aware of such conversation between Modi and Hasina.