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 accuse the party of using the issue as a dog whistle against Mus­lims to galvanise its Hindu-nationalist support base during elections.