New Delhi: Former Assam chief minister and BJP ally in the Assam government Prafulla Kumar Mahanta has said the provisional National Register of Citizens (NRC) made public on July 30 was riddled with errors. Mahanta led a six-year agitation against illegal Bangladeshi migrants in the 1980s leading to the so-called Assam Accord.

It has left out many indigenous people, even tribals, he said.

He said the registry, a database of all Indians citizens in Assam, will not on its own resolve the state’s longstanding problem of illegal migrants.

“The NRC is to enumerate Indian citizens, not to identify or deal with foreigners, according to its legal provisions,” said Mahanta, a student leader in the 1980s,who went on to become India’s youngest chief minister riding a wave of popular support.

The then Rajiv Gandhi-led government had signed the Assam Accord on August 15, 1985, with the All Assam Students’ Union, of which Mahanta was president, ending the agitation. Popular support had swept his newly formed AGP to power that year. Its appeal has since shrunk.

Mahanta criticised the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-- with whom his party, the AsamGanaParishad (AGP), shares power in the state -- for bringing the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016. The bill seeks to grant citizenship to Hindus migrants from Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan, apart from Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians.

Prafulla Kumar Mahanta reiterated his party would pull out of Assam’s Sarbananda Sonowal-led BJP government if the Narendra Modi government passed the bill. “It is possible that the BJP will pass the bill before parliamentary elections to win votes of illegal Bangladeshi Hindus.”

Prafulla Kumar Mahanta said the bill goes against the “Assam accord itself and secularism”. “Do Pakistan or Arab countries ever say all Muslims in the world are welcome to settle in their countries? Only one country does that, which is Israel?”