Deporting Alien Migrants

In April of the year 2016, the Assam government has expressed dissatisfaction over the slow pace of deportation of Bangladeshi migrants caught in the State. On Sunday, a spokesman of the Assam government said that “such delay in deportation has only resulted in frustration of the State machinery.” During a training programme organized in Guwahati, Home Commissioner L.S.Changsan took up the matter with the Ministry of Exterl Affairs representative and asked him to expedite the process by taking up the matter with his Bangladeshi counterpart. The entire development gives the impression of being no more than a cleverly ected charade, since the stance of the Assam government vis-à-vis the issue of Bangladeshi migrants over the years has been all too visible and predictable. As such, the present pious stance, seeking to conform to constitutiol requirements, can only evoke laughter. And what is even more risible is that Under Secretary Prakash Chand of the Ministry of Exterl Affairs (MEA) should be talking of the 35 Bangladeshi migrants deported, when we are dealing with a problem involving lakhs of illegal migrants. And this is what Home Commissioner Changsan had to tell the MEA representative: “We could only deport over 35 Bangladeshi migrants in the last four years or so, while 498 of them are still lodged at different detention camps. If this remains the pace, it would be difficult to address the issue.” Is Changsan really uware of how years of neglect and pretence and silly charades have turned the deplorable situation into something no one can cure now? Why should he be talking in scores and hundreds now when the number of illegal migrants from Bangladesh are in lakhs? Who does Changsan imagine will swallow the kind of pretence the Home Ministry, the MEA and the Union government are trying to put across to the people? Here is a case over 100 functiol tribuls who detect 533 Bangladeshi migrants (out of a few lakhs) and mage to deport only 35 of them in four years. And we now have a song and dance over why 498 of them are still in detention camps. Are Sangsan and Prakash Chand even aware of many thousand such migrants the Home department of the State government has med for deportation? The kind of pretence over just 533 Bangladeshi migrants due to be deported constitutes a cruel joke at the expense of the people of Assam that the Home Ministry and the MEA would do well to avoid.

While they are quibbling over just 533 Bangladeshi migrants, are Changsan and Prakash Chand aware of the jihadi activities going on in Assam supported by money from some West Asian countries diverted through Kerala? Or are they about to pretend that this too is news to them. Are they at all aware of the dangerous consequences of such pretence to the utter neglect of the state of affairs in the State? Are they even aware that the lakhs of Bangladeshi migrants who are claimed to be in Assam illegally are here because the State government has encouraged such illegal migrants? Quite obviously they are not. Such being the actual state of affairs and such being their ignorance of the magnitude of the problem, they would do well not to pretend to be concerned about a problem that they know little about.