The Karnataka government told the Supreme Court on Monday that it has “no immediate plans” to deport Rohingya people living in Bengaluru.
The state in an affidavit said: “Bengaluru City Police have not housed Rohingyas in any camp or detention centre within its jurisdiction. However, 72 Rohingyas identified in Bengaluru City are working in various fields and Bengaluru City Police have not taken any coercive action against them as of now and there is no immediate plan of deporting them.”
The plea filed by advocate Ashiwini Kumar Upadhyay, sought the identification, detention and deportation of all illegal immigrants within a year.
Seeking dismissal of the petition, the government also submitted to the court a list of the 72 people from the Rohingya community.
In August 2017, the then Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiu had told Parliament, that states had been directed to detect and deport illegal immigrants, along with Rohingya people.
Subsequently, two Rohingyas had approached the Top Court against the deportation plans.
In an affidavit filed in September 2017, the Centre responding to the pleas told the top court that the “illegal” influx of Rohingya community members “using the porous border between India and Myanmar… and their continued stay in India, apart from being absolutely illegal, is found to be having serious national security ramifications and has serious security threats”.
The “illegal influx” of Rohingyas had started from 2012-13, when the UPA II was then in power, the affidavit said adding that the government “has contemporaneous inputs from security agencies and other authentic material indicating linkages of some of the unauthorised Rohingya immigrants with Pakistan-based terror organisations and similar organisations in other countries”.
The affidavit stated, besides, there was also “organised influx of illegal immigrants from Myanmar through agents and touts facilitating illegal immigrants/Rohingyas into India via Benapole-Haridaspur (WB), Hili (WB), Sonamura (Tripura), Kolkata and Guwahati.”
India was “already saddled with a very serious problem of illegal immigrants” and was trying to address that in the larger interests of the country, the government had said.
(Inputs from The Indian Express)
