Chagossian human rights activists charge that the number of Chagossian residents on Diego Garcia was deliberately under-counted in order to play down the scale of the proposed mass deportation. Three years before the depopulation plan was created, the British Governor of Mauritius, Sir Robert Scott, estimated the permanent population of Diego Garcia at 1,700. However, in a BIOT report made in June 1968, the British government estimated that only 354 Chagossians were third-generation "belongers" on the islands. This number subsequently fell in further reports. Later in 1968, the British government asked for help from the legal department of their own Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in creating a legal basis for deporting the Chaggosians the islands.