GUWAHATI, Jun. 10 (Reuters) - India has started to push people it considers illegal immigrants into neighbouring Bangladesh, but human rights activists say authorities are arbitrarily throwing people out of the country.

Since May, the northeastern Indian state of Assam has "pushed back" 303 people into Bangladesh out of 30,000 declared as foreigners by various tribunals over the years, a top official said this week.

Such people in Assam are typically long-term residents with families and land in the state, which is home to tens of thousands of families tracing their roots to Muslim-majority Bangladesh.

Activists say many of them and their families are often wrongly classified as foreigners in mainly Hindu India and are too poor to challenge tribunal judgements in higher courts.

Some activists, who did not want to be named for fear of reprisal, said only Muslims had been targeted in the expulsion drive. An Assam government spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Assam, which has a 260 km (160 mile) border with Bangladesh, started sending back people last month who had been declared as foreigners by its Foreigners Tribunals. Such a move is politically popular in Assam, where Bengali language speakers with possible roots in Bangladesh compete for jobs and resources with local Assamese speakers.

"There is pressure from the Supreme Court to act on the expulsion of foreigners," Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma told the state assembly on Monday. "We have pushed back 303 people. These pushbacks will be intensified. We have to be more active and proactive to save the state."

He was referring to the Supreme Court asking Assam in February why it had not moved on deporting, opens new tab declared foreigners.

Bangladesh's foreign affairs adviser, Touhid Hossain, did not immediately reply to an email seeking comment. Last week, he told reporters that people were being sent to his country from India and that the government was in touch with New Delhi over it.

Aman Wadud, an Assam-based lawyer who routinely fights citizenship cases and is now a member of the main opposition Congress party, said the government was "arbitrarily throwing people out of the country".

"There is a lot of panic on the ground - more than ever before," he said.

Photo from Reuters