Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma Tuesday claimed there has been a “massive increase” in attempts at illegal immigration into Assam following the political change in Bangladesh earlier this year, but all those who have been intercepted at the border are Muslims, and not from the minority Hindu community there.
He said that an analysis of the reasons pointed to a setback to the neighbouring country’s textile industry, which is causing workers to seek work in India, incentivised by textile manufacturers seeking cheap labour.
Amidst concerns about minorities being targeted in Bangladesh following Sheikh Hasina’s ouster in August this year, Sarma claimed that while “infiltrators” are regularly being intercepted and pushed back from the Indo-Bangladesh border in Assam since then, “we have not detected any Hindu Bangladeshi in the last five months in Assam”.
“There has been a massive increase in infiltration into Assam and India. Two days back, I had even discussed this with my counterparts in various Northeast states and also with the government of West Bengal. Every day, Assam police are detecting 20 to 30 infiltrators and equal numbers are also being witnessed in Tripura. So when we tried to research why this is happening, (we found that) after the unrest in Bangladesh, the textile industry has virtually collapsed. So, the labourers who earlier worked in the textile industry in Bangladesh are coming to India, and many textile factory owners within our country are incentivising this, giving a good amount of money for importing cheap labour illegally,” he said.
This was also discussed in the North East Council plenary in Tripura earlier this month, and the Assam government has raised it with the Union Home Ministry, he said.
“Once there was unrest in Bangladesh, the economy collapsed. Obviously, the majority community is affected more than the minority community in Bangladesh. In the textile industry too, most of the labourers were from the majority community. So influx has increased into India, and mostly these are from the so-called majority community of Bangladesh; in India, we treat them as a minority community. I think so far we have detained and pushed back around 1,000 infiltrators this year (2024),” he said.
Sarma has been emphasising cases of infiltration at the Indo-Bangladesh border, even posting about individual cases on his social media accounts with the names of those intercepted. Most recently, he had posted on December 25 about five women being apprehended by the Assam police at the border.
“When the Assam government makes a policy, the High Court quashes it saying that ‘India is one country.’.. That’s why, collecting different orders by the High Court, we are trying to bring a domicile policy to determine who can government get jobs in Assam so that we can make an Act in the legislative assembly,” he said.
