India: West Bengal deportations raise human rights concerns
Deporting thousands from India's West Bengal state fulfills a key Modi promise but strains ties with neighboring Bangladesh over verification and repatriation. The reported deportation
Deporting thousands from India's West Bengal state fulfills a key Modi promise but strains ties with neighboring Bangladesh over verification and repatriation. The reported deportation of nearly 5,000 undocumented Bangladeshi nationals from India's West Bengal state, which borders Bangladesh, has become the first major test of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) promise to "detect, delete and deport" after its landslide election victory in the state last month. Just weeks after the vote, authorities ordered districts to set up holding centers for undocumented Bangladeshis and ethnic minority Rohingyas awaiting verification and deportation. According to West Bengal's chief minister, Suvendu Adhikari, around 4,800 people have already been sent across the border, while another 836 remain in custody. Illegal immigration from neighboring Bangladesh has long been one of eastern India's most potent mobilizing political issues for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist BJP. BJP leaders argue that decades of unchecked migration have altered demographics, distorted electoral rolls, strained welfare resources and created security concerns. "The government of India has decided that not only will we stop infiltration, but we will find each and every infiltrator and send them out of the country," said India's Home Minister Amit Shah. Shah added that the government would make the Bangladesh and Pakistan borders "impenetrable" to defeat what he called a "conspiracy to change the demography of the country." Border issue fuels political battle More than half of India's 4,000-kilometer (2,500-mile) border with Bangladesh runs through West Bengal.
For years, BJP leaders accused the previous All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) government of turning a blind eye to illegal migration for electoral gain. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has claimed India's demography is being changed as part of a 'conspiracy' Image: REUTERS The BJP's election victory in West Bengal handed it control of the last major stretch of the India-Bangladesh border not already governed by a BJP administration — creating an opportunity to translate a long-standing political campaign into government policy. "My parents were born here, my grandparents were born here, and yet people are afraid they may one day have to prove it," Nasreen Begum, a homemaker in West Bengal's North 24 Parganas district, told DW. "That uncertainty is what worries people most." Most BJP supporters, especially in border districts, view the crackdown as evidence that the government is delivering on one of its central promises. The opposition sees something else. "Deportations cannot be hostage to communal politics. Proper procedures must be followed and there must be verification. And the rights of citizens, above all, must be respected," TMC lawmaker Sagarika Ghose told DW. "The process must be legal and not political." Critics argue that immigration has become a powerful electoral tool in a state where questions of identity, citizenship and belonging have shaped politics for decades. Deportations spark tensions with Bangladesh Neighboring Bangladesh has objected to what it describes as attempts to push people across the border without completing the verification process.
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