| | | | Rs
420,000 spent to deport one Bangladeshi from Assam
IANS, Mar 9, 2010, 07.52pm IST
GUWAHATI: Believe it or not,
the Indian government spends an
astounding Rs.424,000 to
formally detect and push back an illegal Bangladeshi migrant from Assam.
Assam spent
Rs.410 million between January 2001 and December 2009 in identifying
33,922 foreigners, of whom just 174 could be deported back to Bangladesh.
"This is true that the cost is enormous in
detecting and then pushing back an illegal migrant...cost incurred by
police and expenditure by tribunals," Minister for Assam Accord
Implementation Bhumidhar Barman told the state assembly Tuesday.
The influx of illegal migrant workers from Bangladesh is a major
problem across the northeast, resulting in frequent clashes between border guards of the two
countries.
No official figures are available of the number of illegal migrants
staying in Assam, who sneak in taking advantage of the unfenced border.
However, estimates vary from one million to 10 million.
Assam had witnessed a six-year long anti-foreigners' agitation from
1979, spearheaded by the powerful All Assam Students Union (AASU), culminating
in the Assam Accord of 1985.
Under the accord, March 1971 was taken as the cut-off date - anybody
entering India
after that would be detected and deported. But so far just
1,428 Bangladeshis have been pushed back since 1985.
"This is a
shame on the part of the government to have spent a fortune in the name
of hounding Bangladeshis, but the end result is a big zero,"
Keshab Mahanta, a lawmaker of the opposition Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), said in reply to
the minister.
Assam shares a 272-km border with Bangladesh, of which about 85 percent
has been fenced with barbed wires. Concrete pillars separate the
remaining stretch of the border. The entire border is expected to be
fenced by the year-end.
There are fears that the unabated influx of Bangladeshis would soon
overwhelm the indigenous Assamese.
Bangladesh denies allegations that it encourages people to enter India
illegally.
The tardy pace of detection and deportation was earlier blamed on the
controversial Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act (IMDT).
The Supreme Court
in July 2005 struck down the legislation citing major flaws and replaced
it with the Foreigners Act of 1946.
The IMDT Act was enacted to identify illegal Bangladeshis in 1985 during
the height of AASU's oust-Bangladeshi movement.
Under the Foreigners Act, 32 tribunals were set up to speed up the
process of detection of illegal Bangladeshis.
"There are no judges in 13 of the tribunals and hence we are having
difficulties in the entire process," Barman said
"No matter how many legislations you have, the process of identifying
and proving beyond doubt that someone is an illegal foreigner is an
arduous task. Moreover, it is always very difficult to distinguish a
Bangladeshi from an Assamese as they resemble very much the same and in
the border areas they speak the same dialect," said a police officer.
Another problem is related to deportation once someone is proved to be
an illegal migrant. Once he is taken to the border and pushed back,
Bangladeshi frontier guards invariably force him to re-enter India.
"It is true that some of those pushed back by us entered India once
again using a different border route," the minister said.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/guwahati/Rs-420000-spent-to-deport-one-Bangladeshi-from-Assam/articleshow/5664259.cms Thanks & Regards,
Sudhir Srinivasan
B.Arch, Dip.ID, Dip.CAD, Dip.PM, AIIA, IIID, ARIAI
| Architect |
| | |
| |
|
