Bharatiya Janata Party MP Tejasvi Surya on Wednesday asked the Centre to extend the National Register of Citizens to Karnataka in order to “weed out Bangladeshis”. Surya claimed that a significant population of undocumented Bangladeshi immigrants had been living in Karnataka, especially in Bengaluru, and posed threat to security.

“The state government last year as well as the honourable chief minister had said that there are more than 40,000 illegal Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants in the state of Karnataka,” Surya said in the Lok Sabha. “They have now taken up jobs illegally, procured Aadhaar cards, voter identity cards with the help of state government authorities. They are now posing a very important security threat to the state.”

Surya was speaking during the Zero Hour of the Lower House. The BJP MP urged the central government and Home Minister Amit Shah to extend the National Register of Citizens to Karnataka in order to “weed out Bangladeshis”.

He alleged that ever since the National Register of Citizens was introduced in Assam, the illegal immigrants have been travelling to other parts of the country to seek refuge. Surya concluded his speech by saying that the register should be extended to the entire country as “a sovereign state must protect the integrity of its borders and protect the interests of all its citizens”.

The National Register of Citizens in Assam, which is currently being updated for the first time since 1951, has faced a lot of criticism for excluding lakhs of people from its draft. More than 40 lakh people were excluded from the final draft of the register published on July 30, 2018.