Notice to five states on Bangladeshi migrants issue

New Delhi, Apr 26 (UNI) The Delhi High Court today issued notices to five states bordering Bangladesh to file their replies on tackling the menace of illegal migrants from that country.

A division bench of Justice M K Sharma and Justice Reva Khetrapal said illegal Bangladeshi migrants had been coming to India in hordes and should be deported immediately.

The Chief Secretaries of West Bengal, Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya and Mizoram have been is served with the notices to depute their respective counsel to apprise the court about the action initiated by them.

The Court asked the Centre to state in an affidavit the number of illegal Bangladeshi migrants in India.

''Whether a census was carried out to count the illegal Bangladeshis? If not state the reasons for not doing so in two weeks,'' said the Bench.

When standing counsel Mukta Gupta said the Government had deported 500 and 18 illegal Bangladeshis from Delhi and Assam respectively in the last one year, the Court expressed its anguish saying that out lakhs of them the authorities could identify only 518 people.

The Court also asked the Border Security Force(BSF) to give details of deportation of Bangladeshis month-wise between 2000-05.

Expressing displeasure over the laxity in deportation of millions of illegal Bangladeshi migrants, the bench asked the Election Commission to state the methodology it was adopting to identify such illegal people residing in India.

Ms Gupta said in persuant to the court order, the Government had constituted a Nodal Agency headed by the Union Home Secretary and a Monitoring Agency in every state for the identification and deportation of the illegal migrants.

The nodal agency is headed by Union Home Secretary having Intelligence Bureau (IB) Director, Delhi Police Commissioner, Secretary RAW and other officials as its member in the Capital.

The court was acting on a public interest litigation filed by advocate Chetan Dutt seeking deportation of illegal migrants.

The PIL filed in the year 2001 had contended that illegal stay of Bangladeshis was not only causing serious law and order problem in the National Capital and bordering districts, but has created extra economic burden on the country.

UNI PAT PA ND1918