Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir has said no Bangladeshi citizens had gone to India after the Liberation War.
"After the publication of the National Register of Citizens (NRC), the ministers and politicians of our neighbouring country have told us they will send back the 'infiltrators' from Bangladesh," Fakhrul said. "But clearly, no Bangladeshi went to India after our country achieved independence."
He made the comments at a human chain program organized by BNP to demand the release of their chairperson Khaleda Zia, in front of the National Press Club in Dhaka on Wednesday.
"A deep conspiracy is underfoot to endanger the independence and sovereignty of Bangladesh," Fakhrul claimed.
The BNP secretary general said the government has not been able to solve the Rohingya problem because it is not a legal government, and on top of that, it lacks courage.
"Because of their submissive foreign policy, the government was unable to repatriate a single Rohingya in two years," Fakhrul said.
BNP standing committee member Barrister Moudud Ahmed, Goyeshwar Chandra Roy and Nazrul Islam Khan also delivered speeches at the program among others.
On August 31, India excluded nearly 1.9 million people from the citizenship list made in the Northeastern state of Assam.
A day after the NRC was published, Home Minister Amit Shah said that his government, the Bharatiya Janata Party, wants "not only Assam, but the entire country to be cleansed of illegal immigrants".
The ruling Hindu nationalist government's plan to replicate it at a national level has left many in the Muslim community worried.
