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Drive to evict Bangladeshis from India
Sutirtha Gupta, Kolkata, October 23, 2017
All Assam Student Union (AASU) says the move to drive out Bangladeshis cannot be relaxed.
A few thousand Bangladeshis every year are being sent back from the border with India. They cross the border into India in search of work, to earn a living.
They are caught and sent back, only to return after some time, with the help of agents.
This time round, however, at least two states of India have taken up the issue seriously and have stepped up the drive to evict Bangladeshis.
These states are Assam and Uttar Pradesh, both under the BJP government. In Assam, the BJP government plans to drive out about three million Bangladeshis.
This ‘foreigner’ issue is causing unrest in the state.
Before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, in his West Bengal election campaign Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said, “Refugees are my children. They will stay here. It is the trespassers that will have to leave.”
According to the Indian home minister, there are 20 million Bangladeshis illegally staying in India. Union State Home Minister Kiren Rijiju last November said that driving out the illegal foreigners from India is a continuous process. He said it is the responsibility of the state governments to identify these foreigners, catch them and send them away. The state governments have the authority to do so.
In November 2016, Rijiju said in Rajya Sabha, the upper house of parliament, “There are reports of Bangladeshi nationals having entered the country without valid travel documents. Since entry of such Bangladeshi nationals into the country is clandestine and surreptitious, it is not possible to have accurate data of such Bangladeshi nationals living in the various parts of the country.
As per available inputs, there are around 20 million (2 crore) illegal Bangladeshi migrants staying in India.”
Rijiju did not dwell on a definite strategy of the government to identify and deport the 20 million illegal Bangladeshi migrants. “Deportation of illegally staying foreign nationals is continuous process.
The powers of identification, detention and deportation of illegal foreign nationals including Bangladeshi nationals have been delegated to the state governments and Union territories under Section 3(2)(c) of the Foreigners Act, 1946,” he stated.
Politics is heating up in Assam over the issue of evicting Bangladeshis. Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal’s former student organization, All Assam Student Union (AASU) says the move to drive out Bangladeshis cannot be relaxed. Anyone failing to prove their nationality, whether Hindu or Muslim, will be driven out of the state.
AASU is known to be strongly anti-Bengali. In the past too they have been determined to drive out foreigners.
In India, Assam is the only state with a National Registrar of Citizenship (NRC). NRC coordinator Pratik Hajela recently submitted a draft list to the Supreme Court which stated that about three million residents of Assam were there illegally. However, he didn’t elaborate on what basis he came to this conclusion nor did he define citizenship.
Hajela spoke about original inhabitants (OI) in Supreme Court, but did not explain who they were. Yet according to the Assam agreement, those living in Assam before 15 March 1975 are all permanent residents of the state.
In the meantime, the Supreme Court has ordered that the NRC list has to be published within 31 December. Since the issuance of this order, the hardliner anti-Bengali AASU is once again vocal in its demand to evict foreigners.
Assam’s language and religious minorities feel that BJP is instigating AASU to take such a stand. Congress fears that if this ‘foreigner’ stigma is attached to three million persons, the state will erupt in unrest again.
Former chief minister and veteran Congress leader Tarun Gogoi placed a counter question to the journalists, where will those who fail to prove their citizenship go? No one even has the proof that those who cannot prove their nationality due to their poverty, or other reasons, are actually Bangladeshi as often alleged to be.
So Bangladesh in no way will accept them. Gogoi says that many poor people have no shelter. Many of them lose all their belongings in the floods every year. Many can’t afford the legal fees to prove themselves Indian citizens. If initiative is taken to force them out as foreigners, violence will break out in the state.
Human rights activists say that the condition of Bengalis in Assam is worse than the Rohingyas. They say in Bangladesh or Pakistan, the minority can protest.
Here they cannot even cry.
Official accounts say there are around 800 thousand Bangladeshis in Uttar Pradesh. The police supers of all the districts have been asked to identify and list the Bangladeshis, after which the drive to evict them will commence from the middle of next year.
Opposition political parties fear that the move to drive out Bangladesh will result in harassment of Bangla language speakers.
https://southasianmonitor.com/2017/10/23/drive-evict-bangladeshis-india/
Sutirtha Gupta, Kolkata, October 23, 2017
All Assam Student Union (AASU) says the move to drive out Bangladeshis cannot be relaxed.
A few thousand Bangladeshis every year are being sent back from the border with India. They cross the border into India in search of work, to earn a living.
They are caught and sent back, only to return after some time, with the help of agents.
This time round, however, at least two states of India have taken up the issue seriously and have stepped up the drive to evict Bangladeshis.
These states are Assam and Uttar Pradesh, both under the BJP government. In Assam, the BJP government plans to drive out about three million Bangladeshis.
This ‘foreigner’ issue is causing unrest in the state.
Before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, in his West Bengal election campaign Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said, “Refugees are my children. They will stay here. It is the trespassers that will have to leave.”
According to the Indian home minister, there are 20 million Bangladeshis illegally staying in India. Union State Home Minister Kiren Rijiju last November said that driving out the illegal foreigners from India is a continuous process. He said it is the responsibility of the state governments to identify these foreigners, catch them and send them away. The state governments have the authority to do so.
In November 2016, Rijiju said in Rajya Sabha, the upper house of parliament, “There are reports of Bangladeshi nationals having entered the country without valid travel documents. Since entry of such Bangladeshi nationals into the country is clandestine and surreptitious, it is not possible to have accurate data of such Bangladeshi nationals living in the various parts of the country.
As per available inputs, there are around 20 million (2 crore) illegal Bangladeshi migrants staying in India.”
Rijiju did not dwell on a definite strategy of the government to identify and deport the 20 million illegal Bangladeshi migrants. “Deportation of illegally staying foreign nationals is continuous process.
The powers of identification, detention and deportation of illegal foreign nationals including Bangladeshi nationals have been delegated to the state governments and Union territories under Section 3(2)(c) of the Foreigners Act, 1946,” he stated.
Politics is heating up in Assam over the issue of evicting Bangladeshis. Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal’s former student organization, All Assam Student Union (AASU) says the move to drive out Bangladeshis cannot be relaxed. Anyone failing to prove their nationality, whether Hindu or Muslim, will be driven out of the state.
AASU is known to be strongly anti-Bengali. In the past too they have been determined to drive out foreigners.
In India, Assam is the only state with a National Registrar of Citizenship (NRC). NRC coordinator Pratik Hajela recently submitted a draft list to the Supreme Court which stated that about three million residents of Assam were there illegally. However, he didn’t elaborate on what basis he came to this conclusion nor did he define citizenship.
Hajela spoke about original inhabitants (OI) in Supreme Court, but did not explain who they were. Yet according to the Assam agreement, those living in Assam before 15 March 1975 are all permanent residents of the state.
In the meantime, the Supreme Court has ordered that the NRC list has to be published within 31 December. Since the issuance of this order, the hardliner anti-Bengali AASU is once again vocal in its demand to evict foreigners.
Assam’s language and religious minorities feel that BJP is instigating AASU to take such a stand. Congress fears that if this ‘foreigner’ stigma is attached to three million persons, the state will erupt in unrest again.
Former chief minister and veteran Congress leader Tarun Gogoi placed a counter question to the journalists, where will those who fail to prove their citizenship go? No one even has the proof that those who cannot prove their nationality due to their poverty, or other reasons, are actually Bangladeshi as often alleged to be.
So Bangladesh in no way will accept them. Gogoi says that many poor people have no shelter. Many of them lose all their belongings in the floods every year. Many can’t afford the legal fees to prove themselves Indian citizens. If initiative is taken to force them out as foreigners, violence will break out in the state.
Human rights activists say that the condition of Bengalis in Assam is worse than the Rohingyas. They say in Bangladesh or Pakistan, the minority can protest.
Here they cannot even cry.
Official accounts say there are around 800 thousand Bangladeshis in Uttar Pradesh. The police supers of all the districts have been asked to identify and list the Bangladeshis, after which the drive to evict them will commence from the middle of next year.
Opposition political parties fear that the move to drive out Bangladesh will result in harassment of Bangla language speakers.
https://southasianmonitor.com/2017/10/23/drive-evict-bangladeshis-india/