New Delhi: The Union home ministry on Monday told the Supreme Court that it doesn’t have accurate data on the extent of illegal immigration into India due to the secretive nature of such movements.The ministry was responding to a December 7 order from the top court. “Illegal migrants enter into the country without valid travel documents in a clandestine and surreptitious manner. The detection, detention and deportation of such illegally staying foreign nationals is a complex ongoing process. It is not possible to collect accurate data of such illegal migrants staying in various parts of the country,” the ministry’s affidavit said.It told the court that 14,346 foreign nationals were deported from India between 2017 and 2022, and 17,861 migrants who had entered Assam between January 1966 and March 1971 were granted citizenship.Additionally, the affidavit mentioned that 32,381 individuals were declared foreigners by Foreigners Tribunals during the same period, with Rs 122 crores released for the functioning of these tribunals in the last five years, Bar and Bench reported.The response came in the context of the Supreme Court’s inquiry into immigrants conferred Indian citizenship through Section 6A(2) of the Citizenship Act, 1955. The Court had sought these details while hearing a challenge to its validity.As per Section 6A people who entered India between January 1, 1966, and March 25, 1971, and have been living in Assam, will be allowed to register themselves as citizens.Section 6A of the Act was accepted by Parliament in tandem with the memorandum of agreement, popularly known as the Assam Accord, signed in 1985 between the leaders of the anti-foreigner agitation in the state and the Union and state governments to address the issue of immigrants entering the state without documents.Several petitions have been filed before the Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of this provision and concerns that it has worsened the problem of illegal immigration in Assam, Bar and Bench reported.In its December 7 order, the court had asked the government to provide data on: the number of those who were granted citizenship under the relevant section of the Act; foreigners detected between 2017-2022; estimated inflow of illegal migrants into India including but not confined to Assam; number of foreigners’ tribunals set up by the Union government; cases disposed of by the tribunals; cases pending before them; average time taken for disposal of cases and the number of cases pending before the Guwahati high court on such issues.It had also asked the government to mention the steps taken by the Union government on the administrative level to deal with illegal immigration into the territory of India, particularly North-Eastern States, the Bar and Bench report said.The government in its response said that 100 Foreigners Tribunals were currently functioning in Assam and had disposed of 3,34,966 cases by November this year with 97,714 cases pending.As of December 1, nearly 8,500 appeals against tribunal orders were pending before the Gauhati high court, the affidavit said.The affidavit also highlighted 81.5% of fencing work, covering a total length of 210 km, in feasible areas of the Assam-Bangladesh border had been completed.