NEW DELHI, July 20 ? A week after claiming that there was over 1.20 crore illegal Bangladeshis in India, the Union Home Ministry has contended that infiltration of illegal migrants from Bangladesh has slightly decreased. Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Sriprakash Jaiswal said this on the basis of the number of Bangladeshi national apprehended by Border Security Force (BSF) during the past three year. According to the figures made available in the Lok Sabha in reply to a question, he said that during the year till June 20, 12,476 Bangladeshi nationals were nabbed by BSF. Last year, BSF apprehended around 21,453, while 15,549 Bangladeshi infiltrators were detained by the BSF in 2002. The matter of illegal infiltration was taken up with the Government of Bangladesh.
The official stand of Bangladesh Government is that there are no illegal Bangladeshi migrants in India, the Minister said. It may be mentioned that Jaiswal created a sensation last week when in reply to a question he informed that there was about 50 lakh illegal Bangladeshi migrants in Assam and 57 lakh in West Bengal. According to the Minister, a number of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh over-staying in India were about 24,359. Last year, about 21,813 illegal Bangladeshis over-stayed in India. Meanwhile, the Union Government claimed to have established an institutional mechanism with Bangladesh, Myanmar, Bhutan and Nepal for sharing security related issues including cross border terrorism. India has also established a dialogue mechanism with China on counter-terrorism, Union Minister of State for Home, S Reghupathy said in a reply. The institutional mechanism with the neighbouring countries provides a forum for sharing information on cross border terrorism and expressing India?s concern and has been found useful, the Minister said.
As for steps taken by Government to tackle militancy in the North-East, the Minister said that most of India?s neighbouring countries have assured that they will not allow any anti-India activities from their soil. Royal Bhutan Government had recently carried out operations against Indian insurgent groups based in Bhutan, he said. In the operations against the militants, 30 camps were destroyed, besides a large number of insurgents were either captured or otherwise neutralised. Admitting that a large number of wanted insurgents from North East were carrying out operations from Bangladesh, the Minister said that porous Indo-Bangladesh border provided easy access and safe routes for infiltration and ex-filtration to the militants for their trans-border movements for conducting subversive activities from the soil of Bangladesh.
Meanwhile, in a separate reply in the Lok Sabha, the Minister of State said that some non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in North-East have been put on watch list for their links with terrorists? organisations. These NGOs have not engaged themselves openly in supporting or promoting terrorist activities but have maintained discreet links with the outfits, he said. A close watch is being kept on such NGOs. They are not getting any financial assistance from the Government of India, he further claimed. It may be recalled that MASS in Assam and few other NGOs and human rights groups in Nagaland were named by the Centre last year as groups suspected to have links with underground outfits.