As Amit Shah was appointed as the new Home Minister of India, the steps to strengthen internal security has started in full swing. The Ministry of Home Affairs has said that it will assist the Assam government in setting up of 1,000 tribunals where people can contest their exclusion from the National Register of Citizens (NRC). The foreigners’ tribunals will be equipped with legal staff and the 40.7 lakh people who have been declared illegal immigrant could make their claims for citizenship. The list was published on July 30, 2018, and the target date to release the final list of citizens is July 2019. The tribunals will require nearly 12,000 officials including 1,000 legal officials and legal staff to preside over them.
As president of BJP, Amit Shah had promised that each and every illegal Bangladeshi immigrant who was living in India would be sent back to his country. These actions show that the BJP government in the centre 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.
The 1,000 new tribunals would substantially reduce the burden of 100 existing tribunals and the legal citizens in the detention centre would get quick justice. The Supreme Court of India is monitoring the whole NRC exercise. The NRC for Assam was first released in 1951 and the state had a population of 80 lakhs at that time which increased to 3.11 crore, as per 2011 census. Of the 40.7 lakh people whose names did not appear in the list, 2,48,077 were on hold and the claims of 37.59 lakh people were rejected. Many of the rejected people are contesting for citizenship.
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 gone 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.
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 the community, ideology and politics to suit their own ends.
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.