UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi warned India today not to leave millions stateless in a citizenship registration drive.

A registration process conducted in Assam registered 31.1 million people as citizens, leaving out almost two million lifelong residents of the state.

The state is carrying out a citizenship check agreed to following a massacre of alleged immigrants in the 1980s, but never implemented until now.

Critics say Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu chauvinist regime is using the check to deprive Muslims of citizenship.

As governor of Gujarat in 2002 Mr Modi was accused of inciting violent anti-Muslim riots that killed hundreds following a terrorist attack on a train carrying Hindu pilgrims.

Since becoming prime minister he has promoted Hinduism as the only true Indian religion; attacks and murders of Muslims, Christians and political opponents have soared.

He has also launched a hysterical campaign against immigrants, with Home Minister Amit Shah repeatedly railing against Bangladeshi immigrants as “termites” polluting the nation.

Some of those deprived of citizenship in the Assam registration say they face being taken from their families and forced into prison camps.

Some families have had some members approved and not others; farmer Mijanur Rahman tearfully told reporters he, his son and two of his daughters are on the list but his wife and three other daughters are not. They may be jailed or deported, though it is unclear to where.

The attacks on minority rights have also targeted indigenous Adivasi people, who inhabit previously protected ancestral lands in jungle areas. A land registration project has ruled that about two million Adivasis should be evicted from their land.

Though the government claims the programme is aimed at safeguarding threatened wildlife habitats, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) says the land being taken was being handed to mining and logging companies, with an “ease of business” programme speeding up approval processes for deforestation.

Since Mr Modi came to power in 2017, the average length of time companies wait for approval to clear forest has dropped from 580 to 180 days.

The party says the authorities are also responsible for lynchings and murders of Adivasi people, and called at the weekend for an investigation of a raid on an Adivasi home in Palamu, Jharkhand state, last week, in which police shot dead a three-year-old girl.