New Delhi: For the past seven months, the Jammu and Kashmir Police has been monitoring migrants working at orchards, brick kilns, and construction sites. They have been called to police stations for verification of their identity and documents, including Aadhaar cards.
This process helped the administration identify Bangladeshi nationals living and working in Kashmir.
“The workers were asked to produce their Aadhaar cards during a registration exercise and discrepancies in the information provided by them led to further verification,” a senior J&K police officer said. “We have been collecting fresh data on the migrants working in Kashmir. The drive was a result of intelligence input about the presence of foreign nationals.”
Soon after initial identification, the foreign nationals were kept in a camp and the process of identifying their countries was started. “The details of these nationals were shared with authorities in Bangladesh. And once their nationality was confirmed, we initiated the process to deport them under provisions of the Foreigners Act,” said the above-mentioned official. “The BSF will be escorting them to the designated transit points in West Bengal from where they will cross the international border.”
A day after the Jammu and Kashmir administration deported 150 Bangladeshi nationals from Kashmir, it is preparing to deport another batch of 150 foreign nationals on 7 October. On Monday, the Bangladeshi nationals were flown in an Indian Air Force (IAF) plane from Srinagar to Bagdogra, West Bengal, where they were handed to the BSF.
Around 600 Bangladeshi nationals are living in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir. “A majority of them are putting up illegally in Kashmir and a very small number in Jammu. We have flown the first batch of 150 to Bagdogra in West Bengal from Srinagar. We will be flying another batch tomorrow,” said the police official.
Also read: 150 Bangladeshis deported from Kashmir. ‘Aadhaar card data mismatch led to probe,’ say police
Deportation and eviction
The drive against Bangladeshi nationals comes on the heels of an ongoing eviction drive against Rohingya refugees in Jammu.
In Jammu, landlords have been served notices to clear their plots of Rohingya jhuggis. Following the notices, Rohingya settlements in Narwal, Karyani Talab, Sunjawan have been evicted, leaving the families homeless.
The deportation and eviction comes months after the Centre-appointed High-Level Committee on Demographic Changes (HLCDC), headed by retired Justice Prakash Prabhakar Navalkar, visited Jammu and Kashmir. The Indian government created the committee after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a “High-powered Demography Mission” during his Independence Day address last year.
The committee, formed to examine illegal immigration, met Union Home Minister Amit Shah in July before it began its field visit to states and Union Territories. It travelled across the Jammu region from 10 to 12 August, and also visited the Rohingya settlement in Karyani Talab in Narwal.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)