LUDHIANA: Congress leader and former Union minister Manish Tewari claimed on Saturday that nearly 60,000 Indians, majority of them Punjabis, were held in detention camps along the US-Mexico border.Describing the situation as alarming, he said he visited the border during his recent trip to the US. Addressing a workers meeting organized by Punjab Congress secretary Satwinder Jawaddi here, Tewari said he was told that 60,000 Indians who had tried to sneak illegally into the US through Mexico , had been detained by the American authorities. “Of these, 90% are Punjabis,” he said.Expressing concern over the plight of the detainees, he said their release had to be dealt at the level of ministry of external affairs (MEA). “Punjab also needs to create job avenues for youth, so they are not forced to take illegal routes to foreign lands,” he said.Tewari, the former MP from Ludhiana, said the countdown of the NDA government at the Centre had started. “Their despair was revealed during the Prime Minister’s speech in Parliament during the no-confidence motion,” he said. “The NDA may have won the confidence of the House, but it lost the confidence of people across India.”He said he was confident that a “secular, progressive” government would be come to power in the 2019 general elections.

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