An emotive issue in Assam, Tripura, and West Bengal for decades, poll-bound Jharkhand also is now at the centre of a polarising debate on alleged illegal immigration from Bangladesh, with the BJP pitching it as a major election campaign theme.

A day after Union Home Minister Amit Shah accused the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM)-led Hemant Soren government of going soft on the issue of infiltration and alleged that the tribal population in the state was declining due to the government treating “Bangladeshi infiltrators as its vote bank”, Prime Minister Narendra led the attack on Monday.

“Bangladesh ghuspaithiyon ke vote paane ke liye ye in ghuspaithiyon ko poore Jharkhand mein basaa rahe hain. Jab schoolon mein Saraswati Vandana tak par rok lagne lage to pataa chaltaa hai ki khatra kitna badaa hai. Jab teej-tyoharon mein pattharbaazi hone lage … to pataa chalta hai ki sthiti kitni khatarnak hai … Ye aapki roti bhi chheen rahe hain, ye aapki beti bhi chheen rahe hain and aapki maati bhi hadap rahe hain. Agar JMM-Congress-RJD ki yahi kuneeti jaari rahi to Jharkhand mein Adivasi samaj ka daayra sikud jaayega (For votes, they are settling Bangladeshi infiltrators throughout Jharkhand. When Saraswati Vandana was disallowed in schools, when there was stone-pelting during festivals … we realise how grave the threat is … They are snatching your livelihood, your daughter, and your land. If this flawed policy continues, the Adivasi population will shrink in Jharkhand),” Modi said.

The PM has said repeatedly in the state that illegal immigration is a major issue. He raised the issue of demographic changes at a rally in Hazaribagh on October 2, adding that the state government was unwilling to see what everyone could see, framing the election as one for “Roti, beti, maati (Livelihood, daughters, land)”.

For decades, Assam has been a state where the issue of an increasing population of Bengali speakers — allegedly because of illegal immigration of Bengali-speaking Muslims from Bangladesh — has been a source of much polarisation because of the alleged threat posed to the indigenous population of the state.

The political beneficiaries of this over the decades range from the Asom Gana Parishad, which came to power in the 1980s after the Assam Accord of 1985, to the BJP, which has been in power in the state since 2016. The BJP’s strident anti-immigration pitch, despite anti-CAA protests in the state, has struck a chord, with the party aligning itself with the concerns of Assamese Hindus.

The issue has also been discussed for decades in the context of Tripura, where the party has claimed that the tribal population has shrunk. The BJP has succeeded in getting tribal as well as Bengali votes in Tripura without getting caught in their battles while the CPI (M), once all-powerful in the state, has suffered as tribals largely shunned it, considering it a Bengali party. The BJP’s state in-charge Sunil Deodhar made efforts to ensure that despite Bengali demographic dominance in the state, the party should also reach out to tribals, a strategy that worked. However, the BJP could just scrape through in the last Assembly elections, with the Tipra Motha coming up as a tribal party and cornering significant chunks of tribal votes.

In West Bengal, the BJP has targeted the Trinamool Congress (TMC) for allegedly facilitating the entry of undocumented migrants, like the Left Front government before it, for “vote-bank politics”.

But it has balanced this by projecting the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) as a hope for Dalits from the Matua sect, sections of whom crossed over from present-day Bangladesh at different points in time. Here, the CAA is framed as a relief for Matuas as it promises to offer them citizenship. Despite setbacks in the 2021 Assembly elections and the Lok Sabha elections this year, the BJP has become a key player and made significant inroads among Matuas who helped it win a record 18 parliamentary seats in 2019.

In Jharkhand, the framing has been tweaked. “Illegal immigration” from Bangladesh in the tribal-dominated Santhal Pargana division has emerged as the BJP’s main poll plank, with the party now repeatedly claiming a spike in Bangladeshi Muslims settled in the state, thereby altering the demography to the detriment of Jharkhand’s tribes.

With the promise of a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) and keeping tribals outside its purview, the BJP’s campaign has acquired a tacit but sharp religious framing. In 2019, the JMM swept away the BJP in tribal seats and in the recent Lok Sabha elections too it failed to win any of the seats reserved for the Scheduled Tribes.

The BJP is hoping that the politics of polarisation over immigration will improve its performance in Jharkhand too by cutting into the JMM’s core votes. On Monday, BJP spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia claimed that while the tribal population in Santhal Pargana fell from 46% to 42% between 2001 and 2011, the population of Muslims went up from 33% to 36%.

The framing of the alleged threat posed to roti (snatching away of local livelihood), beti (marrying tribal girls), and maati (acquiring tribal land) was deployed both by Bhatia and Shah earlier this week. The BJP’s promise: if it comes to power, it will identify the illegal immigrants and possibly “deport” them, and bring a law to return the tribal land allegedly acquired by them back to the original owners.

BJP’s Jharkhand co-in-charge and Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, one of the key leaders driving this narrative, has said in Ranchi that in power the BJP government could conduct a National Register of Citizens (NRC) to identify undocumented immigrants, adding that if this wasn’t done “infiltrators” would occupy the entire state.