With just three weeks to go for the closure of claims for inclusion in the National Register of Citizens in Assam, Army chief General Bipin Rawat has said that he supports NRC, and that parties opposed to it are undermining national security. In an interview to Times Now, the chief of Army staff also said that most of the accusations of fake encounters and human rights abuses by the army were false.

Rawat said he supported deportation of those who have entered the country illegally. “If they are illegal, they need to be deported. If they are legal, they need to be amalgamated. But then that amalgamation must happen in a manner that benefits everybody. Let it not go the political way,” he said.

He suggested that political parties were helping illegal migrants stay on. “There are some organisations which have amalgamated them into the system. There are others who have come in illegally who do not have citizenship, but there are some people who are trying to get them citizenship,” he said.

In February, Rawat had spoken of the growth of All-India United Democratic Front, led by MP Badruddin Ajmal, in Assam. Rawat had said: “There is a party called AIUDF. They have grown in a faster timeframe than BJP.”

Army chief General Bipin Rawat said, “When we talk of Jan Sangh, with two members of Parliament and where they have reached, AIUDF is moving at a faster pace in Assam. Finally, what will be the state of Assam, we have to take a call.”

Speaking to Times Now, the Army chief also defended the Army’s record on human rights and called for investigations against individuals and organisations “filing false cases against soldiers with an intent to malign the institution”.

“The time has come to probe these people who have come out with these cases,” he said. Rawat gave the example of a case in the National Human Rights Commission when he was in the Eastern Command. “The case was that one of the units had killed a terrorist and the body was missing. We started the probe, and found that the lad was alive. They closed the case. But what about the person who made this allegation, should that not be investigated?” he said.

Where the Army found that encounters were staged, it has taken strict action, he said. “Where we felt encounters, I won’t say were fake, but could have been better conducted, we have punished people,” he said. Rawat said complaints about fake encounters were being filed by “third parties”. “To say it was a fake encounter or that it was not conducted in a way the Army is supposed to conduct an encounter, the complaint should come from near and dear ones. In most of the cases, the allegation has come from a third party. It could be an NGO that has been created.