ELECTIONS '98
COMMENTARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ARCHIVES

Maharashtra to fight stay on deportation of 'Bangladeshis'

The Maharashtra government has decided to fight the Calcutta high court's order of Saturday restraining further deportation of what the state claims are Bangladeshi nationals from the state.

Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Gopinath Munde said the state government would present its case before the Calcutta high court and, if required, that the state government would even move the Supreme Court.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Mahohar Joshi is expected to write to his West Bengal counterpart Jyoti Basu, asserting that the people who had been deported were Bangladeshis and not Bengali-speaking people as claimed by Basu.

Though the Calcutta high court has stayed the deportation of the Bangladeshis, the state government is firm about clearing out Bangladeshis as a matter of policy. Deportation of Bangladeshis illegally living in the state was part of the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance government's election promises.

A state government team left for Calcutta on Saturday to make a detailed study of the petition and the decision to restrain the Maharashtra government from further deportation of illegal immigrants.

Basu said the Maharashtra government's act to deport Bengali-speaking people was unfortunate. He condemned the state government and the Bombay police for deporting Indians from the state identifying them falsely as Bangladeshis.

West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee President A B A Ghani Khan Chowdhury urged Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to personally intervene. Pradesh Congress working president Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi has taken up the matter with Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

Bombay Police Commissioner Ronnie H Mendonca, who met Joshi and Munde on Saturday, said in a statement that since 1982 8,013 Bangladeshis had been deported. In their detection and deportation all rules and regulations have been followed meticulously. Only Bangladeshis staying in Maharashtra illegally have been deported, and not any Indian, he said.

Munde has reiterated his demand of arrest of Forward Bloc MLA Rabin Ghosh who reportedly incited a mob attack on July 23 at Ulberia near Kharagpur in West Bengal and attacked Maharashtra police personnel who were escorting the deportees. In the scuffle the policemen received minor injuries.

UNI

RELATED REPORT:
Walkout in Parliament over Maharashtra deportation issue

Tell us what you think of this report