It’s no hidden secret that a large number of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants are living in India, which takes a heavy toll on the resources of the country. The large numbers of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants also pose a huge security threat to the nation. These illegal immigrants are helped by a large number of people belonging to a particular section of community, ideology and politics to suit their own ends. On Monday, Railway police in Assam arrested 31 illegal Bangladeshi immigrants at the Guwahati railway station. They were detained while they were planning to return to Bangladesh via Agartala.
Assam: 31 Bangladeshi nationals were apprehended in Guwahati while they were planning to go back to Bangladesh via Agartala.They were held from Guwahati railway station platform No. 1.They had been working in Bengaluru for last 3 years. pic.twitter.com/6HpAmqh4Nr
— ANI (@ANI) October 15, 2018
Speaking to Republic TV, Guwahati’s Railway Police DSP, Iftekar Ali said, “Today at around 10 AM when the railway officials were conducting routine checking around the station, they found few suspicious people on the station. When they questioned them and asked to produce some IDs, they said that they were from Bangladesh and had come from Bangalore yesterday. They were going to their native village in Bangladesh.”
The detained illegal immigrants had been working as house helps and had taken up other petty jobs in Bengaluru, Karnataka, where they had been living for the past two to three years. According to a My Nation report, one of the arrested immigrant from Bangladesh- Suleman Kuddus- agreed to the fact that many Bangladeshis enter India every day by crossing the international border. It is a continuous process, he himself too accepted to having helped many Bangladeshis in entering India. Suleman, who had been living in Delhi for the past two decades, said that over one crore Bangladeshi are living illegally in Delhi, Bengaluru and other parts of India.
The names of the arrested Bangladeshi nationals are Md Suleman Kuddus, Md Jamal, Shimul, Sabina, Sakebol, Salma, Hassan, Hussain, Masum, Minara Khatun, Abdul Mijanur, Masuma Khatun, Dulal Mia, Hanufa Begum, Md Hanif, Moriam Begum, Aalam Khan, Md Jahagir, Aesha Begum, Jannalu Firdus, Md Jahangir, Md Arif, Md Babu, Md Shar Alom, Shahinur Akhtar, Md Suhel, Muchalafa, Md Raju Hawladar, Md Hussain Bayate, Hassan Biswas, Tajinur Begum and Shiuli Begum.
A large number of people in India are helping Bangladeshi nationals to enter India so as to change the demography of the country. These people are driven by religious and political motives who use these illegal immigrants as their vote banks and for other nefarious agendas of their own.
The recent arrest has taken place months after the Assam government released the second and final draft of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) on July 30, 2018 in order to curb the menace of illegal immigrants in the state. The National Register of Citizens (NRC) released by the Assam government has shown 2.89 crore of the total 3.29 crore population of the state to be eligible for inclusion in the NRC. The reason for updating and publishing the NRC was to separate authentic Indian citizens from the illegal immigrants. The exercise was started by the BJP government again in 2017, following PM Modi’s promise in 2014 to reclaim Assam from the illegal Bangladeshi immigrants. PM Modi had said, “Bangladeshis are entering Assam every day and destroying the state.” ,he had added, “I will make an arrangement by way of which all the routes used by them to enter Assam are closed.”
BJP leader Sarbananda Sonowal of Assam was sworn in as the CM of the state on 24th May 2016. A firebrand leader, Sonowal had already taken the Bangladeshi infiltration issue to the Supreme Court in 2005. The Supreme Court struck down the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) Act, 1983, terming it as unconstitutional and had also went on to term Bangladeshi infiltration as “external aggression”. It was a huge victory for Sonowal who had taken the issue to the Supreme Court with grave concerns over the illegal population of Bangladeshi immigrants residing in Assam.
Quite recently, BJP President Amit Shah had reiterated BJP’s promise that each and every illegal Bangladeshi immigrant who was living in India would be sent back to his country. A day before the release of the final NRC draft, 52 Bangladeshis were deported from Assam. They were deported to Bangladesh through the Mankachar sector on the Assam-Meghalaya-Bangladesh tri-junction. These actions show that the BJP government in the center and state is taking a hard stance and will not bow down to the whims of other political parties, the arrested immigrants and their return to Bangladesh will prove that deportations of more and more illegal Bangladeshi immigrants will continue as they are a threat to the nation and its security.