Will Modi really solve illegal B’deshi issue?

GUWAHATI, June 11: There is a lot of hope that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, given his tough stand on the issue of illegal Bangladeshis in the State, will be able to resolve the long–standing problem, but if he does not take some special steps, the situation will remain the same or even aggravate. Solution of the problem is impossible in the existing detection and deportation mechanism.

According to official records, since 1985 till 2013, 29,237 Bangladeshis in the State had been declared illegal, of which only 2,442 had been deported. This is the speed of the existing detection and deportation mechanism! Strangely enough, of the lakhs of illegal Bangladeshis who have made the State their best living space as reported from time to time, just 29,237 of them were declared illegal.

After detection, it takes many months to deport an illegal Bangladeshi in the present system. There are many illegal Bangladeshis in the detention camps meant for them who have been lying there for months together and are yet to be deported — and no one knows when they will be deported, because Bangladesh does not accept them without concrete proof to its satisfaction. Will Modi look into the matter?

Assam, interestingly, is the only State in the country with foreigners tribunals to detect illegal immigrants. Neighbouring States like Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura in the Northeast where illegal Bangladeshis are settled too, do not have foreigners tribunals. Foreigners tribunals were set up in Assam in 1964 through a special order to tackle a special situation, but now the situation has changed and yet there are foreigners tribunals. In other States, the police picks up illegal immigrants and itself investigates — which is a speedy process compared to the one in the foreigners tribunal regime. Will Modi do something to do away with the existing slow mechanism of detection and deportation of aliens in Assam?

Fencing along the border with Bangladesh cannot be a priority in Assam alone. It should be so in Meghalaya and West Bengal as well, where illegal Bangladeshis find it easy to enter, and then they land up in Assam and spread to the rest of the Northeast. Will Modi give a serious thought to it?

Modi, during his election campaign, had said that after May 16 all illegal Bangladeshis must leave the country. People now want immediate steps by the new Prime Minister. Will he succeed?

(Source) The Sentinel Assam – The Largest Media group of North-East India — focused on news publishing. Combined circulation of the group is over 120,000 newspapers per day, making it the largest newspaper group in the region. The Sentinel is the only English daily in the Northeast India with five editions published simultaneously from Guwahati, Dibrugarh, Shillong, Silchar and Itanagar. For all local, news from Assam, national and international news please visit http://www.sentinelassam.com/