Guwahati: Former Congress MP Kirip Chaliha has said the Congress is a divided house in Assam with one section supporting illegal migrants and another opposing it.

Chaliha, who quit Congress in March 2016, told reporters here on Friday that the process to update the NRC had begun during the tenure of Tarun Gogoi's government in Assam and the Manmohan Singh government at the Centre, but a section within the Congress derailed it.

He said it was because of the inefficacy of the present Congress leadership that the BJP could hijack the agenda of the Congress by updating the NRC.

"Congress was born in Assam to prevent the merger of the state with Pakistan. It was because of the bold stand taken by Congress leaders like Gopinath Bordoloi that Assam remained a part of India after Independence," he said.

He said some Congress leaders are making statements against the NRC update, which has given an impression to the people that the party is going against the interests of the indigenous people of Assam.

Chaliha's comments came in the wake of a WikiLeaks cable dated 16 February 2006, authored by a US consulate officer in Calcutta, which appeared in a section of media, claiming that the then Congress president Sonia Gandhi, while campaigning for Assembly election in Assam in May 2006, offered to amend the Foreigners Act to prevent deportation of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants.

"There is a section in the Congress that supported the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) (IMDT) Act but I had always opposed it while I was in the party," Chaliha said.

He said it was he, along with other Congress leaders like Tarun Gogoi and Bhubaneswar Kalita, who had convinced the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi that illegal migration from Bangladesh was a threat to country's security and integrity, which resulted in signing of the Assam Accord in 1985.