NEW DELHI, July 14 ? In an about turn, the Centre has claimed that an estimated 1.20 crore illegal Bangladeshi immigrants were living in the country including 50,000 in Assam. The Ministry of Home Affairs? latest estimate comes a week after Centre disclosed that some 26,000 foreign nationals were living illegally in the country. The figures given today were tallied with the estimate given by the previous Government in the report of the Group of Minister on Internal security. In the Rajya Sabha, Union Minister of State, Sriprakash Jaiswal disclosed that as on 2001, a high number of estimated 59,500 illegal Bangladeshi immigrants were living in Nagaland. The State has crossed even West Bengal where estimated 57,000 illegal migrants were suspected to be living.
However, it is Tripura, which enjoys the dubious status of being home to a highest number of 3.25 lakh illegal immigrants. The North Eastern Region as a whole is home to highest number of illegal Bangladeshi migrants. According to the estimate there were 800 illegal migrants in Arunachal Pradesh, 30,000 in Meghalaya. The MHA has not given figures for Mizoram, Sikkim and Manipur. According to the Minister some 26,769 illegal Bangladeshis could be deported in 2003, a marked increase from 5,652 deported a year earlier. In 2001, 7,854 illegal Bangladeshi immigrants were deported. The Minister said that according to a direction by Delhi High Court in response to a PIL, Government of NCT of Delhi launched a special drive to detect and deport Bangladeshi national staying illegally in Delhi.
The Action Plan drawn up by the Delhi Government included setting up of 10 Task Forces to detect and deport illegal migrants. The Force was assigned to identify at least 100 illegal Bangladeshi every day, which was later revised to 600 per month by the Nodal Authority set up under chairmanship of the Union Home Secretary, which reviews the progress made by the Task Force.
Meanwhile, Minister of State for Home Affairs, S. Reghupathy said that target date for completion of the barbed wire fence along the Indo-Bangladesh border has been advanced by a year to 2006. In Tripura, which has the highest number of illegal Bangladeshi, only 141.30 km of fencing has been completed so far out of 746 km sanctioned in 2000. The fencing work in Tripura us scheduled to be completed by 2006, the Minister said.