Hundreds of Bangladeshis have fled parts of northeastern India, officials said yesterday.
The exodus came after an anti-immigrant group launched a campaign against suspected illegal migrants from the neighbouring country,
The newly formed Chiring Chapori Youth Forum has been sending mobile phone text messages to people in the Dibrugarh district of Assam asking residents to take an oath which reads: "No food, no job, no shelter to Bangladeshis."
Fearing attacks, around 300 Bangladeshis have voluntarily left the district and moved to nearby districts, police said.
"About 300 people, including women and children, have left Dibrugarh in Assam state during the past two days although no force has been used by anyone to oust them," Bhaskar Mahanta, a top police officer in Assam said from Dibrugarh, 500 km east of Guwahati.
The group had earlier distributed pamphlets asking Dibrugarh residents not to employ Bangladeshi nationals, saying the native Assamese people would soon be outnumbered in the state by illegal migrants.
The Assam state government yesterday ordered an inquiry into the circumstances under which groups of people had to leave Dibrugarh.
Assam, a state of 26 million people, had witnessed a mass uprising in the 1980s against illegal Bangladeshi migrants.
The All Assam Students' Union, or AASU, one of the prominent groups fighting the influx of illegal migrants, estimates that between 4 and 5 million migrants from Bangladesh are living in Assam.
"The government must gear up to detect the illegal Bangladeshi migrants according to the law and deport them," said Samujjal Bhattacharya of the AASU. He said illegal migration into Assam was still occurring, a charge Bangladesh has denied.
Earlier this month, AASU representatives met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi and urged federal authorities to fence the 4,000 km long India-Bangladesh border and take steps to detect and expel illegal Bangladeshi migrants.
The Assam government on Saturday instructed the police and civil authorities to remain vigilant against any communal backlash in the wake of the large-scale exodus of suspected Bangladeshi workers from Upper Assam districts.
The exodus has sparked fears of possible communal clashes with some political parties trying to give the issue a religious angle.
Earlier, Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi asked his deputy, Home Minister Rockybul Hussain, Planning Minister Himanta Biswas Sharma and his commissioner B.K. Gohain to rush to Dibrugarh to visit the district and assess the situation.
The home minister on his way to Dibrugarh said, "I will be able to react only after visiting the area."
The president of the youth forum, Rajib Gogoi, appealed for a similar campaign across the state and clarified that they are neither associated with the All-Assam Students Union nor the Bharatiya Janata Party, who claims to be the champion of anti-foreigners movement in the state.
In view of the increasing pressure, the police have also intensified the identification of immigrant Bangladeshis in the district.
Meanwhile, a similar move against immigrant Bangladeshi workers was reported from Upper Assam's Jorhat and Golaghat districts, where residents have begun refusing to hire immigrant workers or utilise their services in daily life.