Karnataka has decided not to implement the National Register of Citizens in the state, The Times of India reported on Monday. The BS Yediyurappa-led administration has instead decide to create a database of the immigrants without documents and foreigner who had overstayed their visa.

“We’ll not introduce an Assam-like NRC,” said Karnataka Home Minister Basavaraj Bommai. “However, we are considering compiling details of citizens that must help the government in tracking down illegal and overstaying foreign nationals.”

This came as a departure from the his remarks earlier this month that the NRC would be implemented in the state, which had begun the process of collecting information on immigrants. He had then said this was part of the central government’s plan to extend the exercise to the rest of the country to identify and separate undocumented immigrants.

Labhu Ram, an official with the Foreigners’ Regional Registration Office, said that nearly 800 foreigners had overstayed their visas in the state. He said that the figure changed constantly as it was depended upon detection, adding the state government’s proposed database would be useful.

On Thursday, Bommai had said that detention centres for foreigners were being set up in the outskirts of Bengaluru. “There is a detention centre ready near Nelamagala, it needs to operationalised, we have discussed it and there will be no further delay in operationalising it,” he said, according to India Today. The minister had said that those immigrants involved in illegal activities would be moved to the centres until they were deported.

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