India is not a dumping ground for any Tom, Dick, and Harry, they have been saying, adding that if India is to be secured, all the Rohingya immigrants have to be thrown out lock, stock, and barrel.

MoS in the PMO has made some unambiguous statements on the Rohingya issue, it is hoped that all these illegal immigrants will be deported from Jammu and other parts of the country.

On January 3, the Minister of State in Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), Jitendra Singh, made a big announcement on the Rohingya presence in Jammu and other parts of India. He said: “After getting the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) passed in Parliament, the government’s next move would be regarding the deportation of Rohingya Refugees” (read illegal immigrants). He made this big statement while speaking at the First Capacity Building Programme for officials of the Jammu and Kashmir Government on Central Financial Rules, 2017 and E-procurement, in Jammu.

According to another estimate, these Rohingyas have been settled at about 24 locations in and around Jammu City alone. Besides, they have been settled in the adjoining Samba district.

Reflecting on the Rohingya issue vis-à-vis Indian citizenship, Jitendra Singh said: “We have a sizeable population of Rohingya here…What will be the plan of their deportation, the Centre is concerned about it…Lists will be made and if needed, their biometric certificates will also be taken, because the CAA does not give any leverage to Rohingya…” But more than that, the MoS asserted that “the Rohingyas do not belong to any of those three countries and those six minorities”. In fact, he referred to the six non-Muslim minorities (Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh, Parsi and Christian) of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan covered under CAA and declared that “They (Rohingyas) would not be able to secure citizenship by any means”. He made yet another important statement on the Rohingya settlement in Jammu. “It is for analysts and researchers to find out how the Rohingya reached Jammu from Myanmar,” he said.

Since these statements were made by none other than the MoS in PMO, these could be considered serious and important policy statements. The Rohingya issue is an old issue. The people across the nation, barring all the secular outfits, pseudo-liberals and human rights activists, have been demanding their deportation from India for years now. Their upshots have been three. One is that these illegal immigrants from Myanmar have been eating up India’s resources. The other is that they pose a live threat to national security. And their third refrain has been that they constitute a threat to the nation’s demography. “India is not a dumping ground for any Tom, Dick, and Harry,” they have been saying, adding that if India is to be secured, all the illegal immigrants from Myanmar, Bangladesh, and Pakistan have to be thrown out lock, stock, and barrel. Not just this, many concerned citizens have been urging the Narendra Modi Government to apply the Myanmar model to surmount the problem of illegal immigrants.

That the Rohingyas are a threat could be seen from the fact that even Muslim Bangladesh’s Muslim Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had on occasions more than one publicly stated that Rohingyas should quit her nation as they constituted a threat to regional and national security and a threat to the Bangladesh’s environment. That not even one Muslim nation out of almost 60 is prepared to accept the Rohingyas speaks for itself. It’s a different story that we have in India a class that conveniently overlooks these hard realities and continues to bat for the illegal immigrants for reasons not really difficult to fathom. It was they who knocked the doors of the Supreme Court three years ago against the official move to deport illegal immigrants. The case is still pending for disposal.

It would not be out of place to mention here that the people of Jammu, like other Indians, have also been demanding the deportation of Rohingyas and Bangladeshis for years. They have held a number of protest demonstrations and taken out a number of protest rallies, but with no result. It is also important to note that it was after 2007 that the people of Jammu started witnessing the Rohingya influx. The worst part of the whole situation was that these illegal immigrants got the fullest possible support from the successive governments in Jammu & Kashmir, including the governments of Ghulam Nabi Azad, Omar Abdullah, and Mehbooba Mufti. That the Rohingyas were brought to Jammu was a part of deep-rooted conspiracy could be seen from the fact that some Rohingya leaders themselves revealed that “some Kashmiri motivated them to come to Jammu saying they would be safe there as Jammu & Kashmir is a Muslim-majority state”. Some even went to the extent of saying that “they didn’t know even the name of Jammu and that they were brought to Jammu from Kolkata by train”. It would be no overstatement if it is said that these Rohingyas were brought to Jammu to change its demography and help Pakistan and its operatives in Kashmir create Kashmir-like situation in the strategic Jammu so that they could cause Hindu migration from the region and separate the entire State of Jammu & Kashmir from India and merge it with Pakistan.

It’s also no wonder then that the crime rate in Jammu City increased much fold with the criminals in the Rohingya community indulging in all sorts of crimes, including drug trade and girl trafficking.

According to one unofficial estimate, nearly one lakh Rohingyas were settled in Jammu City and around it at strategic locations along the national highway, on Jammu’s high hills, near Nagrota, Sunjuwan and Kaluchak vital army camps, railway station and so on. According to another estimate, these Rohingyas have been settled at about 24 locations in and around Jammu City alone. Besides, they have been settled in the adjoining Samba district.

When, in 2015, the Mufti-led PDP-BJP coalition government was formed, it was hoped that it would take steps to deport the Rohingyas and Bangladeshis from Jammu, but it was not to be. On the contrary, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti declared on the floor of the Assembly in Jammu itself that “it would not be appropriate to deport Rohingyas from Jammu”. It was during her regime and during the regimes of Omar Abdullah-Congress regime that the Rohingyas were given all sorts of facilities. No wonder then that many Rohingyas could obtain Aadhaar, Ration and Voter Identity Cards, set up Burmese Market in Jammu’s Bathindi area, got their children admitted in government schools and constructed even houses after obtaining State Subject Certificates. It’s also no wonder then that the crime rate in Jammu City increased much fold with the criminals in the Rohingya community indulging in all sorts of crimes, including drug trade and girl trafficking.

Now that the MoS in the PMO has made some unambiguous statements on the Rohingya issue, it is hoped that all these illegal immigrants will be deported from Jammu and other parts of the country. The nation just can’t afford their presence as the forces hostile towards India have already joined hands against the CAA, the National Register of Population, the National Register of Citizens, and even census.

Note:

1. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of PGurus.