Will take back if any Bangladeshi citizen is living in India illegally: Rizvi

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Will take back if any Bangladeshi citizen is living in India illegally: Rizvi

Rizvi said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has assured Bangladesh that it shouldn't worry on this issue

Tuesday December 17, 2019 11:51 PM, ummid.com with inputs from IANS

Kolkata: Dhaka is ready to take back any "genuine" Bangladeshi citizen staying in India illegally, but New Delhi will have to furnish proof first, Gowher Rizvi, the international affairs advisor to Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, said here on Tuesday.

Rizvi said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has assured Bangladesh that it shouldn't worry on this issue.

Rizvi's comments came in the backdrop of the BJP-led NDA government's repeated assertions that lakhs of Bangladeshi infiltrators are in India and they would be driven out once a pan India National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise is undertaken.

"The Indian prime minister has assured us that we needn't worry, and it won't have any effect on us. Nobody from the Indian government has told us if some Bangladeshi citizens are there or not in that list," said Rizvi.

"Our policy is very clear. If any genuine Bangladeshi citizen is staying in India illegally, then of course we will take them back. But it has to be proved first," he said.

This is the second time in a week that Bangladesh has made this assertion. On Sunday, Bangladesh foreign minister A.K. Abdul Momen said his country has requested India to provide a list of any Bangladesh nationals living illegally in the country and it will allow them to return.

“We will allow them (Bangladesh citizens) as they have the right to enter into their own country,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Delhi Police's Special Branch in a secret report revealed that several men in mobs that indulged in stone pelting and arsoning were illegal Bangladeshi Muslim migrants.

An organised group of Bangladeshi (infiltrators), worst hit by the Citizen Amendment Act (CAA), were behind the violence in the Seelampur area on Tuesday, it said. Several such Bangladeshis with criminal past were instrumental in initiating violence, it said and added, some armed infiltrators wearing masks set afire the state properties.

The protest was peaceful for the past two days, however, around 2 p.m. on Tuesday, a group of 10-15 people resorted to violence and attacked a school bus, it said.

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