283 'irregular Bangladeshis' in Karnataka

The Congress government in southern Indian state of Karnataka yesterday said there were 283 irregular Bangladeshis in the state, and the process was on to deport them, but the opposition BJP rejected these figures, claiming that they were in thousands.

State Home Minister G Parameshwara said in reply to a question raised by Sunil Kumar V of the BJP in the state legislative assembly session in Belagavi that there were 748 Bangladeshis in the state, 283 of them are staying illegally here as per the Foreigners Act, 1946.

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To detect illegal migrants, a special taskforce had been constituted at district and city levels, and police had been asked to maintain a vigil and find such migrants in their respective jurisdictional areas, he was quoted by PTI as saying.

A total of 283 irregular Bangladeshis are in the state, they include 16 in Mandya, one in Dakshina Kannada, three in KGF, 11 in Ramanagara, 13 in Mysuru district, one in Chikkamagaluru, 14 in Bengaluru district, 25 in Mysuru urban, 197 in Bengaluru urban and two in Shivamogga.

Rejecting these numbers, Sunil said it looked like the government was trying to protect the irregular  migrants.

Asking the government to consider this issue as a matter of internal security as most of them were involved in "anti-social activities", he said it should take action against them.

Parameshwara said there were about 25 cases under which these Bangladeshi nationals were punished for involvement in some kind of offence.

He said 52 of them had been deported and there are also some cases that are in courts and under investigation.

Another BJP leader Jagadish Shettar questioned why those identified as irregular  migrants were not being deported and claimed they were thousands in numbers in the state.