Modi govt banishing 'illegal Bangladeshis' with an eye on Delhi polls

It serves a dual purpose. For those who wish to cross India illegally, particularly from the Bangladeshi border, it is a warning that the old laid-back policy on undocumented migrants entering India is now a thing of the past under the BJP dispensation.

For the voters of Delhi, who plan to cast their ballot for the Delhi Assembly elections next month, it is a signal that the Union government means business; it is seen to be evicting illegal Bangladeshi residents, an issue that excites passions easily in the national capital.

In an ongoing crackdown on illegal immigrants in Delhi, around 30 people have been deported and more than 1,500 have been identified by the Delhi police since the drive began in December 2024. In the past week alone, the police have arrested nine Bangladeshi nationals from the Old Delhi area for illegally entering and residing in India. All the nine were sent for deportation.

Also read: Bangladeshi infiltrators, fake passports | Mamata turns table on Modi govt

Drive on LG’s directions

Special Commissioner of Police (Law and Order), Madhup Tiwari said this verification drive is being conducted under the directives of Delhi Lieutenant Governor (LG), VK Saxena, to identify and take illegal actions against illegal migrants from Bangladesh.

“Following the LG’s direction, we have launched a campaign in which we have started identifying illegal immigrants and deporting them. In Zone 2, the Southern zone, we have identified more than 25 such illegal immigrants so far and have also started the work of deporting them. At the same time, we had a big success in the South district, where we busted a racket in which we not only identified their route to enter India but also caught the people involved in it, who used to make their Aadhar cards here illegally,” he said.

No clarity on route

The deportation route is clear. Those picked up by the police have been handed him over to the Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO). In Delhi, there are three known locations where immigrants are detained. Two of them are managed by the Department of Social Welfare, Government of Delhi. One of them is located at Nirmal Chhaya in West Delhi, which holds immigrant women, and another is at Lampur Complex in North Delhi’s Narela, which houses immigrant men. The third at Shahzada Bagh is managed by the FRRO in West Delhi and meant exclusively for Bangladeshis.

While the conditions at the detention centres are abysmal to say the least, the bigger question is how does India deport illegal Bangladesh residents in the absence of a formal deportation treaty between the two countries, even though an extradition agreement between the two sides was inked in 2013? The process is shrouded in opacity.

No treaty with Bangladesh

The then Minister of State, Home, Kiren Rijiju told Parliament in 2018, “There is no specific treaty or agreement with the Government of Bangladesh regarding repatriation of its citizens who have illegally entered India,” adding that “detention and deportation of illegal immigrants is a continuous process. Pending deportation, apprehended illegal migrants are kept in detention centres. Details regarding numbers of people declared illegal migrants and detained in detention centres in various states/Union Territories are not centrally maintained.”

The route taken by the illegal immigrant from Delhi – or any other FRRO unit anywhere in the country, to Bangladesh – is unclear. If there is no formal extradition, how are the people handed over from Indian authorities to Bangladesh authorities? Points out Meenakshi Ganguly, Deputy Director, Human Rights Watch's Asia Division: “India would need to share documents with the Bangladesh government, which would have to confirm the identities of its nationals.” It remains unclear if that is happening.

Also read: AAP helps illegal Rohingyas, Bangladeshis settle in Delhi to use them as vote bank: BJP

Crossing points

Instead, human rights activist Suhas Chakma of The Rights and Risks Analysis Group (RRAG), who has catalogued human right excesses in Northeast India for years agrees that no one quite knows how this system works. “It is likely that people are just left at the identified crossing points and asked to cross over. Once, on the other side they are not India’s problem anymore,” he says.

The main crossing points on the 4,096 km-long India-Bangladesh borders are:

Petrapole-Benapole: The busiest crossing point, with about 2.5 million people crossing annually. It's also India's busiest Integrated Check Post (ICP), accounting for $2.5 billion in bilateral trade annually.

India-Bangladesh Friendship Gate: Located between Tamabil (Bangladesh) and Dawki (India).

Rail crossings: There are five operational interchange points between the Indian and Bangladesh railway networks: Petrapole (India) - Beanpole (Bangladesh); Gede (India)-Darshana (Bangladesh), Singhabad (India)-Rohanpur (Bangladesh); Radhikapur (India)-Birol (Bangladesh); and Haldibari (India)-Chilahati (Bangladesh).

'Humane approach needed'

Says Dhaka-based Abu Hena Razzaki, and advocate at the Bangladesh Supreme Court and Chief Executive, Bangla Foundation: “It is good that India wants to consolidate people-to-people ties between the two countries, but pushing immigrants back into Bangladesh is perhaps not the best way to go about it. We are not going to kill the migrants who come back, but they would certainly be a burden on our country.”

“So my appeal to the Indian government is to take a more humane approach and follow the peaceful co-existence route. We need India, and it should be based on mutual self-respect,” he said, adding that Indian visas to Bangladesh citizens have now almost stopped and that the process should be renewed as it existed earlier.

Also read: Jharkhand | Campaign against Bangladeshi infiltration social, not political: Champai

No reliable numbers

There are no reliable numbers on illegal immigrants and numbers are in a free fall. During the UPA government, the then Union Minister of State for Home Affairs, Sriprakash Jaiswal, told the Parliament in July 2004: “12 million illegal Bangladeshi infiltrators were living in India.” Later, Rijiju put the figure at around 20 million.

The latest deportment drive has put several slum clusters in the national capital – particularly those with substantial Bengali-speaking populations - on the edge. A shaken Shahidul Hasan, a resident of Rangpuri in Delhi, told this reporter that he escaped the deportation camp by a whisker when he was able to produce an Aadhar card just in the nick of time. Eight others in the same area, who could not, were picked up on December 29, 2024.

The population of Delhi’s slums is estimated to be between 2 million and 4.5 million, depending on the source. According to the Delhi Urban Shelter and Improvement Board (DUSIB) estimates, about 3 million people live in 600,000 households in Delhi’s urban slums. The Delhi Human Development Report (2006) calculated that 45% of Delhi’s population live in slums, which includes informal settlements, squatter settlements, and unauthorised colonies, while Rajya Sabha estimates put the number of slum dwellers at 15.5 lakh people living in 675 slum clusters in the national capital.

Rohingya Muslim refugees

Bangladeshi migration to India, which is largely a leftover of history, has always been a political issue, fired in the main by the BJP, which has claimed that the Congress has used them as vote banks.

The issue, always a live political one come election time, has been further compounded by the arrival of Rohingya Muslim refugees, who live in several locations in Delhi, but concentrated mainly in the Kalindi Kunj camp in southeast Delhi where they survive in tents on land belonging to the Zakat Foundation. The refugees moved to this location after a fire destroyed their camp in 2021. They rely on water tankers for drinking, hygiene, and domestic needs.

Then there is Madanpur Khadar, a Rohingya refugee settlement in Delhi that uses groundwater from hand pumps and motor pumps. The settlement is located next to a garbage dumping and sewage drainage site, which poses environmental and health challenges followed by Sri Ram Colony, a densely populated area in northeast Delhi where Rohingya refugee families have been living for several years. However, their children face documentation issues when trying to enrol in Delhi government schools.

Also read: Ground report | BJP’s hunt for ‘Bangladeshis’ in Jharkhand turns boon for 2.5 lakh people

A complex issue

For more than 50 years, minority Rohingya Muslims have fled to neighbouring countries, including Bangladesh and India, to escape persecution and discrimination in Buddhist-majority Myanmar. But in recent years in India, the Rohingya refugees have been detained by police for illegal entry and threatened with deportation.

According to a 2019 UNHCR estimate, over 40,000 Rohingya refugees were in India, including around 22,000 who are registered with the UN agency. The refugees mostly work in menial jobs and live in decrepit shack colonies.

Clearly, apart from the politics of it all, illegal migration remains a complex and intractable issue in this country, its course largely determined by politicians and their agendas.