GUWAHATI, Dec 13 � The Minister-in-charge of Assam Accord Implementation, Himanta Biswa Sarma today admitted that deportation of foreigners is not an easy task because of lack of extradition treaty with Bangladesh. He also said that the Government of India should take up the matter of problems faced in deportation of Bangladeshi nationals with the Government of the neighbouring country.
Replying to a zero hour question in the State Assembly today, the Minister said that of the 22,647 foreigners identified by the Tribunals so far, only 2442 could be deported, while, 32537 persons who came to Assam between 1966 to 1971 were identified and disfranchised for 10 years. He said that the Government is serious on the issue of infiltration of foreigners and that is why a white paper was published giving details of the problem and the steps taken to deal with it.
Sarma said that the allegations by the Opposition should be backed by statistics and no large scale infiltration is going on. But it is a fact that lack of an extradition treaty with Bangladesh is a problem, which needs to be addressed by the Government of India.
Earlier, raising the issue, Keshab Mahanta (AGP) referred to the recent visit of a team of members of parliament to Assam and pointed out that they had claimed that the issue of infiltration was never raised by the Government of India.
