Author: Times News Network
Publication: The Times of India
- Internet Edition
Date: September 1, 2001
Around 5,000 Hindu refugees have
been living in abject poverty in Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot's hometown
here for the past two years, waiting to be granted citizenship and rehabilitation.
However, local authorities denied
that they had any knowledge about the refugees.
It is estimated that over 17,000
refugees living in western Rajasthan are yet to be granted citizenship.
As a result, a large number of the the refugees who belong to the lower
caste communities, have been denied rehabilitation under the SC/ST scheme,
says the convener of the Pak Visthapith Sangh, Hindu Singhj Sodha.
Subject to government apathy in
India, on the one hand, and religious persecution in Pakistan, on the other,
these refugees have been caught between the devil and the deep sea, laments
Sodha.
When contacted in Jaipur, chief
minister Gehlot said: "I am not aware of it (large number of refugees)
and cannot comment on it till some specific inquiry is made."
Incidentally, Gehlot's predecessor
Bhairon Singh Shekhawat had taken up cudgels on behalf of the Sindhi migrants
and helped to rehabilitate a group from the 1971 war. Way back in 1972,
Atal Bihari Vajpayee had staged a protest against sending the refugees
to Pakistan in Barmer and had been arrested for it.
More recently, Pradesh Congress
Committee president Girija Vyas had taken up the matter. The Congress MP
Barmer-Jaisalmer region, Col Sonaram Chowdhury, and BJP secretary Manvender
Singh had discussed the plight of the refugees at a series of meetings
in Barmer.
Said Manvender Singh: "It is shocking
and sad that our CM can afford to remain ignorant and worse, feign ignorance
when lakhs of people in this state are being deprived of their basic human
rights every day. Whereas the Gujarat chief minister had raised the issue
of 100-odd fishermen languishing in Pakistan prisoners in a letter to the
PM, urging him to take up the matter during the Agra summit with Pakistani
president Pervez Musharraf, our chief minister has failed to recognise
this as a problem," claimed Sodha.
