NEW DELHI: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi´s closest political ally has pledged to rid the capital of “illegal´ immigrants if his party wins looming elections, in a forceful appeal to his party´s Hindu constituency.

Interior minister Amit Shah said every unlawful migrant from neighbouring Bangladesh would be expelled from New Delhi “within two years” if his party succeeded in next month´s provincial polls. “The current state government is giving space to illegal Bangladeshis and Rohingyas,” Shah told an audience of several thousand at Sunday´s rally. “Change the government and we will rid Delhi of all illegals.”

India shares a porous border stretching thousands of kilometres with Muslim-majority Bangladesh, and illegal migration from its eastern neighbour has been a hot-button political issue for decades.

There are no reliable estimates of the number of Bangladeshis living illegally in Delhi, a city to which millions have flocked in search of employment from elsewhere in India over recent decades.

Critics of Modi and Shah´s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) accuse the party of using the issue as a dog whistle against Muslims to galvanise its Hindu-nationalist support base during elections. Delhi, a sprawling megacity home to more than 30 million people, has been governed for most of the past decade by charismatic chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).