Early Times Report
Jammu, Oct 5: The Supreme Court on October 4 finally endorsed the official stand on the illegal Rohingya immigrants living in different parts of India, including Jammu and Jammu's Samba district.
A bench headed by new Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi, son of former Assam Chief Minister and Congress leader, dismissed Left activist Prashant Bushan's petition to stop the deportation of the seven Rohingyas, saying it couldn't walk into the executive domain.
Prashant Bhushan, who had sought the top court's intervention, said it was the duty of this court to protect stateless citizens, which Rohingya refugees were. The bench shot back, telling Prashant Bhushan that "he need not remind the judges of their responsibilities".
In its affidavit, the Home Ministry had underlined that the seven were willing to go back to Myanmar. They were illegal migrants and had served their sentence under the Foreigners Act. Tushar Mehta, the centre's senior law officer, told the court that the Myanmar government had acknowledged that the seven were its nationals and given them a certificate of identity to facilitate their return.
Assam has about 32 Rohingya refugees in detention camps in Assam, about 15 of them, including seven minors are in Tezpur,. They are mostly believed to be from the Rakhine State in Myanmar and were apprehended in 2014 by the railway police.
The immediate fallout of the Supreme Court ruling was that the Union Government handed over Rohingya to the Myanmar authorities. This was be the first such official deportation from India to Myanmar.
Thousands of Rohingya Muslims have been fleeing the Rakhine State on Myanmar's western coast for years, often caught between the military and Rohingya insurgents who have fought a bloody war for years. They mostly landed in Bangladesh, but some did cross over into India also. The Indian security establishment believes there may be upwards of 40,000 refugees in India. But, according to unofficial estimate, their number runs into lakhs and they are spread across India, especially Jammu, Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan and Hyderabad. Many of them have reached as far as Kerala.
The October 4 ruling of the apex court will have far reaching impact across the country as it has paved way for deportation of Rohingyas. The new ruling is altogether different from the various rulings given by former Chief Justice Dipak Misra. The fact that the new bench recognized the executive authority of the Indian state has only set a precedence, which no judge would like to break. The BJP has already welcomed the ruling and said that "the deportation of seven Rohingyas from Assam to their native country Myanmar will have a far-reaching impact, particularly in the border state of Jammu & Kashmir". |
