New Delhi, Sep 11: Terming illegal immigrants a "challenge" for the nation, Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal pitched for the implementation of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) across all states of the country.

The Assam Chief Minister while addressing an event on the NRC issue underscored, "Illegal immigrants are a challenge for us and to answer this challenge, NRC needs to be implemented in all the states. It is a document through which we can protect all Indians."

At the same event, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national general secretary Ram Madhav said, "Three steps will be taken after NRC, detect, delete and deport. NRC will ensure detection of illegal immigrants. Next step will be disenfranchised- deletion of names of illegal immigrants from voters list and deprive them of government benefits. The third stage will be deportation."

The first draft of NRC for Assam, which was released in January contained the name of 1.9 crore Assamese. The second and final draft, which was released in July, included names of 2.89 crore people, out of 3.29 crore applicants in Assam, leaving out names of nearly 40 lakh people.

NRC is a register containing names of Indian citizens, which was prepared for the only time in 1951 and is being updated for only Assam to weed out the illegal immigrants.

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