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After West Bengal, it is now Maharashtra's turn to acknowledge that the continuing illegal influx of Bangladeshi migrants is a serious problem. The Congress-NCP coalition has asked the Centre to vest officers of the rank of deputy commissioner of police and superintendent of police with powers to arrest and deport illegal Bangladeshi refugees.
This was announced, according to an agency report from Mumbai, by deputy chief minister, Chhagan Bhujbal, in the state legislative council.
The decision comes in the wake of evidence of an increasing number of illegal Bangla migrants moving out of their traditional safe havens of Assam, West Bengal and Bihar towards Mumbai and nearby industrial clusters.
Mr Bhujbal said the agency report acknowledged that Bangladeshis had settled down at Mira Road in the Thane district. He made a strong case to toughen laws to deal with illegal immigrants, saying the existing ones were a handicap rather than a help for law-enforcement authorities.
The Maharashtra government's new approach comes on the heels of the CPM 's volte-face on the issue of illegal Bangla immigrants.
Jettisoning its traditional refusal even to acknowledge the problem, the CPM leadership and West Bengal -CM, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, have confessed not just its existence but also the crisis-like dimensions it has acquired. Chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya has vested district magistrates with the power to deal with the problem which has altered the demography of the districts sharing borders with Bangladesh, transforming them into Muslim-majority ones.
The chief minister, who was forced to take a hard look at the situation because of the post-9/11 security situation, has even asked for the introduction of identity cards in a clear rebuff to the pro-Left intellectual establishment which routinely discovers Orwellian designs in similar proposals of the Centre.
Mr Bhattacharya, who attracted the
wrath of minority representatives and upset his pragmatic colleagues when
he asked for surveillance of the madrasas, has also asked for the verification
of ration cards in the border districts. As per the new rules,
only the district magistrates will have the power to distribute the
cards which are illegally procured by the Bangla migrants to flaunt their
Indian 'citizenship'.
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