[Reader-list] News Items posted on the net on Multipurpose National Identity Cards-29

[Taha Mehmood]

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1050426/asp/nation/story_4662351.asp

The Telegraph  	

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Nobody?s children for Dhaka, residents for Delhi
ALOKE TIKKU

New Delhi, April 25: Indians will have to learn to live with illegal
Bangladeshi immigrants.

The government is coming round to the view that there is no way India
can deport the immigrants to Bangladesh when Dhaka refuses to
acknowledge them as its citizens.

Officials say every time an illegal immigrant is refused Bangladeshi
citizenship, international law and convention require that India let
them stay on. They are not eligible for all the rights that an Indian
citizen can claim but can continue to stay in India.

Under the multipurpose national identity card scheme ? the pilot
project has been delayed and is expected to be completed this year-end
? the government has decided to give them a resident card instead of a
citizenship card.

Technically, the officials say, once Dhaka disowns its nationals
living in India, they become ?stateless?. International conventions
require that they be allowed to live in the country where they are
found till a decision is reached on their citizenship status.

An official said the only other way to send them back to Bangladesh is
to push them illegally through the border. Government officials have
long conceded this is what the border forces do but the numbers have
never been significant to make a difference.

?But it is rather uncivilised and not something that anyone ? on this
side or that ? should be doing to deal with a problem involving human
beings,? an official said, pointing out the best way to deal with the
problem was to speed up erecting the border fence and strengthen
policing.

?Everything else that the government says or does is to cater to its
political constituency,? an official said, hinting at the Delhi police
plan, once submitted to the high court, that promises to deport 100
Bangladeshi nationals every day. From 2001 to June last year, Delhi
police claimed to have deported 12,200 people.

The officials, however, concede that most of them would have come back
through the porous border. ?Many of them, specially in a place like
Delhi, treat it as a forced-but-paid holiday?. They only need to spend
money on their return journey,? one of them said.

The Border Security Force is fed up of managing hundreds of people
whenever any state goes into overdrive to round up immigrants and
sends them to the border for deportation proceedings.

According to a group of ministers on national security, there were 1.2
crore Bangladeshi immigrants in the country in 2001 with 50 lakh in
Assam alone.

The UPA government has, however, rubbished this estimate, arguing that
there is no basis for this figure. But it has acknowledged that the
number is significant.

It was this view in the government that prompted home minister Shivraj
Patil to declare after the chief ministers? conference in Delhi last
week that the problem of Bangladeshi immigrants had to be handled in a
humane manner.

Patil also pointed out that though the problem cannot be overlooked it
is important not to blow it out of proportion.

?It should be looked at in the right perspective,? he declared after
listening to seven chief ministers, including those of Bengal and
Maharashtra, who had sought action from the Centre.
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