The Border Security Force (BSF), on Friday, said that Bangladeshi nationals have started returning to their own country following the National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise in Assam and an improving Bangladeshi economy.
“The input that we are getting is the other way round. People from Bangladesh, who had illegally crossed over to India, are going back to Bangladesh and some of them have been apprehended there,” Inspector General of BSF in-charge Meghalaya frontier, Kuldeep Saini, said when reporters asked about fears that Bangladeshis may enter India following the passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).
“We have seen Bangladeshi media reports quoting the Director General of Border Guards, Bangladesh of these movements. However, we did not receive any official report from our Bangladeshi counterpart on this issue,” the BSF official asserted.
However, Saini said that no such cross over movement was noticed at the Meghalaya frontier.
When asked to elaborate further on the illegal Bangladeshi immigrants returning to Bangladesh following the NRC exercise in Assam, the BSF official said that he doesn’t believe in these reports to be “100 per cent true, but to some extent it may be true.”
Asked to comment on former Bangladesh envoy to India, Syed Muazzem Ali’s statement that Bangladeshis would rather swim in the ocean and reach Italy than come to India, Saini said, “Certainly people will resist and will not agree that people from Bangladesh crossing over to India for greener pastures. Even if we are in their place, we will not accept that our citizens are going to the other side.”
“But it is a fact also that the economy of Bangladesh is now improving at a good pace compared to earlier years. So the crossing over of people from Bangladesh has drastically come down from that angle also,” he stated.
Saini said it has also asked the local population to be vigilant to assist the BSF and periodic meetings with local headmen in the border areas are held to build confidence and coordination between the border population and the BSF.
Further, the BSF official informed that no instructions have come from the union home ministry or the external affairs ministry in view of the CAA.
“No, we have not received any instruction. Moreover, there has also been no change in the general rule of guarding the border following the CAA,” Saini said.