GUWAHATI, Oct 14 - Although a sense of alacrity has been witnessed lately following deportation of 10 illegal Bangladeshi nationals caught in Assam on Thursday, the neighbouring country is, however, yet to take a call on the fate of nearly 300 illegal migrants waiting to be deported from the State.
Sources informed that since 2012, the State government had sent nearly 300 reports of Bangladeshi nationals caught on the Indian side (Assam) seeking their deportation. However, barring the latest instance, where 10 of them had been deported, the response has been more or less lukewarm from Dhaka.
The reports seeking deportation of these nearly 300 illegal migrants in question were sent to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) by the State government only to be forwarded to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) for follow-up action.
In fact, Dispur has been reminding the Centre time and again to expedite the process and had recently submitted the entire list of such detainees.
�It is the MEA that takes up the issue with its counterparts in Dhaka. Believing that the MHA and MEA had done the requisite, Dhaka is still to make up its mind on the issue of deportation of these foreigners languishing at various detention camps. However, the latest development has certainly provided a momentum to the entire initiative,� sources told this reporter.
Sources informed that these detained Bangladeshi nationals are those who had confessed to have entered India through the porous international border and had even revealed their home address in Bangladesh.
Contrary to this, there are nearly 300 other suspected illegal migrants lodged in the detention camps who had expressed ignorance about their home address and thus making their deportation virtually impossible.
�We are hopeful that the deportation initiative does not stop here. With more and more suspected Bangladeshi migrants being detained and convicted, the burden on the State exchequer too is increasing,� a top Assam Police official said.
�Until early 2016, only three such illegal migrants could be deported from Assam to Bangladesh in the span of three years time. We can just hope that the government puts the entire process on a fast-forward mode,� sources added.
