Ranchi: The Jharkhand High Court in a significant directive has instructed the state government to identify the illegal infiltrators, suspected to be residing in large numbers in six districts of the state adjacent to West Bengal border with the help of “special branch”.
Hearing on a petition linked to alleged infiltration of Bangladeshi nationals in Santhal Pargana which encompasses the districts of Sahibganj, Godda, Dumka, Deoghar, Jamtara and Pakur, the court directed the state to take help of its special branch for identifying the said infiltrators.
A division bench comprising of justices Sujit Narayan Prasad and Arun Kumar in its order while taking note of a document submitted by the petitioner highlighting decrease in percentage of tribal population from 44.67 per cent to 28.11 per cent between 1951 to 2011 asked the state to respond.
“This Court, considering the aforesaid fact, is of the view that the same is also required to be responded by the State, and if that be so the matter appears to be very serious, in addition to the issue of illegal immigrants as it is a question of extinguishment of tribal community from the State for which the State of Jharkhand was created to protect their interest as also for securing their right, the tenancy law was enacted in the State of Jharkhand i.e., the Santhal Pargana Tenancy Act, 1949 in the Santhal Pargana area and Chotanagpur Tenancy Act, 1908 in the Chotanagpur region”, remarked the bench.
The court further questioned the state that why services of special branch is not being utilised to identify the illegal infiltration. The observation came in response of the state government’s submission that local authorities including the police administration are facing difficulty in identifying such infiltrators.
The bench further while observing that the state’s submission reveals the lackadaisical approach of the district administration since a number of other documents required for availing benefits provided by the government for welfare of the local people cannot be said to be genuine, directed the Deputy Commissioners (DCs) of all the districts of Santhal division to conduct identification of infiltrators having documents such as ration card, voter card and others on the basis of the ‘record of rights’ ( documents pertaining to land records and ownership).
The court further directed the Deputy Commissioners of all the aforesaid districts to also pass necessary orders to ensure that documents linked to availing benefits of the scheme provided by the government are issued only after verifying “record of rights”.
The bench further also issued notices to the Director of the Intelligence Bureau (IB), Director General of Border Security Force (BSF), Director General of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) and Chief Election Commission of India (ECI) seeking a response from them into the matter.
Notably the High Court on July 3 had issued directives to the state and union governments to make an action plan to identify and deport illegal Bangladeshi infiltrators from tribal-dominated Santhal division of the state.
The directives were passed during the hearing of the plea highlighting the sudden increase of Madrasas in Santhal Pargana. The petitioner in his plea had claimed that other the intruders are exploiting the local females of the Scheduled Tribes (ST) community as well as occupying their lands through means of conversion and marriages which needs to be stopped.
The plea also pointed out about the possible planned involvement of certain banned Bangladeshi groups behind the surge in such cases following which the court had instructed the DCs of all the district under the Santhal division to prepare an action plan and take steps to stop illegal Bangladeshi intruders from entering the state.
Decline in tribal population in Santhal
Notably the poll bound state has already witnessing an ongoing tug of war between the opposition leaders and the leaders of ruling coalition on the issue of appeasement politics and declining tribal population in the tribal heartland of Santhal due to alleged mass infiltration of Bangladeshi nationals.
Of late the issue has been highlighted aggressively by the leaders of the BJP who have time and again alleged the incumbent ruling coalition of Jharkhand Mukti Morcha-Congress-Rashtriya Janata Dal for going soft on the intruders for the sake of vote bank policy.
Significantly, the BJP president of Jharkhand unit also penned a letter to the CM Hemant Soren seeking formation of a Special Investigating Team (SIT) to find out the reason behind the continuous decline of the population of the tribal community in Santhal.
In his letter, Marandi has highlighted that the tribal accounted for around 45 per cent of the total population in the Santhal region in the year 1947 which has now fallen to around 28 per cent. He further has warned that the Muslim population in the Santhal region is expected to surpass the tribal percentage in the estimated figures of the 2031 census.
