 Hiteswar Saikia, a chief minister of Assam in early 1990s and senior Congress party leader, for example gave conflicting statements in his speeches.In the front of some crowds, he denied there were any foreigners; before other crowds, he said there were hundreds of thousands of illegal foreigners in Assam that need to be deported.In 1997, the state government completed a study and marked numerous names in its voter list with "d" meaning "disputed citizenship", with plans to block them from voting.