NEW DELHI, April 26 - The Centre has confirmed that it has come across instances of some illegal immigrants with forged documents, including voter identity cards, driving licences and ration cards.
However, Minister of State for Home Affairs, Haribhai Parthibhai Chaudhary, said, �Since the matter relating to issue of voter identity cards, driving licences and ration cards is within the purview of the State Government, such complaints are to be enquired by it.�
Details of the complaints received and action taken in this connection, and the number of persons arrested in this regard are not maintained as the issue is directly under the State Government�s jurisdiction, the Minister said in a Lok Sabha reply.
However, in order to strengthen the immigration system and monitor the entry and exit of foreigners, the Central Government implemented projects like Mission Mode Project on Immigration, Visa, Foreigners� Registration and Tracking (IVFRT), the Minister said.
The projects seek to provide unified access to the immigration and law enforcement authorities about the Visa application data, immigration data, registration data and other relevant information about the stay and travel of foreigners in India, for effective tracking of the foreigners, he added.
Last year, Minister of State for Home Affairs, Kiren Rijiju, told the Parliament that a Kolkata-based racket was involved in illegally managing forged passports and other Indian documents for Bangladeshi migrants.
The apprehensions and seized documents revealed that Bangladeshi nationals do manage to source Indian citizenship documents. The intelligence inputs indicate that there is a Kolkata-based racket that manages to arrange such forged passports and other Indian credentials, Rijiju told the Parliament.
Admitting that illegal Bangladeshi migrants were caught with Indian citizenship documents, Rijiju said that 11 people were apprehended with such documents.
�It is not feasible to apprehend the border-crossers in the foreign soil. However, some Bangladeshi nationals have been apprehended by the BSF recently while crossing the border with Indian citizenship documents,� the Minister said.
According to the MHA, over 80,000 Bangladeshi nationals, who entered the country with valid documents, have disappeared in past three years in India.
The Centre informed the Parliament that 82,585 Bangladeshi nationals, with valid travel documents have gone missing in India.
In 2012, some 21,274 Bangladeshi nationals disappeared. The highest number of 32,644 Bangladeshis went traceless in 2009, though the figure came down to 28,667 next year.
According to Home Ministry�s record, 67,945 foreign nationals hailing from different countries have disappeared in India.
