No courts, take Bangladeshi infiltrators to BSF instead: Bengal CM Suvendu tells police

Kolkata: Any person who allegedly migrated from Bangladesh to India through illegal means will no longer be produced in the courts if caught by police or the Railway Protection Force personnel in West Bengal, the state’s chief minister, Suvendu Adhikari, said on Thursday.

The chief minister said that any illegal migrant who entered India from Bangladesh would now be handed over to the Border Security Force after being detained by the police or the RPF personnel in West Bengal, instead of being produced in the courts.

“Since yesterday, the new rule has come into effect under which infiltrators will not be sent to courts but handed over to the BSF at the Bangladesh border,” Adhikari, the chief minister of the state’s new Bharatiya Janata Party government, said.

The illegal migration from Bangladesh to India was a major poll issue for the BJP, which had a landslide victory in the just-concluded assembly elections in the state, routing the Trinamool Congress, which had ruled the state for 15 years since 2011.

The BJP accused the then government led by Mamata Banerjee of helping illegal migrants from Bangladesh to India to settle in West Bengal and turning them into a vote-bank of her TMC.

The saffron party alleged during the campaigning that the TMC’s policy of turning a blind eye to illegal migration of the Muslims from across the Bangladesh-India border had not only changed the demographic profile of the border districts of West Bengal but also posed threats to the Hindus as well as the national security.

“The police commissioner and the RPF have been clearly instructed that if any migrant from Bangladesh, who is not entitled to apply for citizenship under the CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act 2019), is detained at Howrah (railway) station, he or she should not be sent to a court,” the chief minister said on Thursday. “The person concerned should be properly fed and then taken directly to the BSF personnel at the Petrapole border in Bongaon or the border outpost in Basirhat in North 24 Parganas district,” he said.

The TMC had last year launched a campaign to protest the harassment, detention and, in some cases, even summary deportation of the Bengali-speaking migrant workers from West Bengal in other states, especially the ones ruled by the BJP. Mamata Banerjee’s party alleged that the Bengali-speaking migrant workers from West Bengal, despite being genuine citizens of India, had been wrongly deported to Bangladesh, without allowing them to prove their citizenship.

The Ministry of External Affairs recently stated that over 2862 cases of nationality verification of people, who allegedly migrated from Bangladesh to India through illegal means, had remained pending with the government of the neighbouring country, some for over five years. New Delhi stressed that all illegal foreign nationals staying in the country must be repatriated in accordance with laws and procedures in force in India and established bilateral arrangements. The MEA stated that New Delhi expected Bangladesh to expedite the nationality verification of people accused of migrating to India illegally so that the repatriation could smoothly take place.

Himanta Biswa Sarma, the chief minister of the BJP government in neighbouring Assam, often publicly said that the state police and the BSF had “pushed back” several people, who had illegally migrated from Bangladesh to India, as the process to deport them remained stuck for long.