The Congress Party yesterday said the Rohingya issue was very sensitive and the government’s blanket approach will not help sort out matters.
The main opposition party demanded that the government take all parties into confidence on the matter.
“It is a sensitive matter. All of us have to be very restrained and responsible... although there is much to say, I am deliberately restraining myself and using very measured terms,” Congress spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi said.
“First, it is incumbent and obligatory on part of the government to take every part of the political spectrum and segment into confidence in a collective sense on this very important and sensitive matter,” he said.
Singhvi said only a collective consultation/participatory interaction will help the government.
“It will help to decipher, delineate, and put boundaries on where there are genuine national security problems and where there are none,” the Congress leader added.
“A blanket approach is never helpful.”
Singhvi’s reaction came as the government told the Supreme Court that the Rohingya who have fled Myanmar are a serious security threat and sought to justify moves to deport up to 40,000 of the refugees.
Mukesh Mittal, a senior home ministry official, said the Supreme Court must let the government take a decision in Indian interests because of Rohingya links to extremist groups.
“Some of the Rohingyas with militant background are also found to be very active in Jammu, Delhi, Hyderabad and Mewat and have been identified as having a very serious and potential threat to the national security of India,” Mittal said in a written submission to the Supreme Court.
But the West Bengal Commission for Protection of Child Rights (WBCPCR) branded as “inhuman” and “anti-human” the governments’ stand on deportation and said it has refused to send back refugee children to the neighbouring country.
“We have let the Chief Minister’s Office know that we think it’s extremely inhuman and anti-human to send the Rohingya children back on the path to death. There is no question of sending them back,” WBCPCR chairperson Ananya Chakraborti said.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee yesterday asserted all Rohingya are not terrorists.
She said the central government had asked her state to formulate a list of the children residing in shelter homes and prisons and share it with them to execute the deportation.
Asked about the numbers, Chakraborti said 24 Rohingya children are present in shelter homes and 20 in prisons with their mothers, adding that the child rights protection body has also refused to share the list with central government.
In Hyderabad, All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen president Asaduddin Owaisi said the government had no legal leg to stand on over the Rohingya issue.
Reacting to the government’s affidavit in the Supreme Court that Rohingya posed serious threat to national security, the Hyderabad MP said it was propaganda by the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government.
Accusing New Delhi of looking at the issue from a religious angle, he said while amending the Foreigners Act in 2015, it gave certain exemptions to Hindus, Sikhs, Parsis, Christians and Jains arriving from Pakistan and Bangladesh the word Muslim was not included.
He said the refugees were entitled to protection of their fundamental rights under Article 12 and 14 of the Indian Constitution.
The AIMIM leader urged the government to look at Rohingya as a humanitarian issue.
“They ran away from their country to save themselves from Myanmarese government. They have nothing to eat or wear and are jumping into the sea to save themselves. To send them back will be a great travesty of justice. I hope this will not happen,” he said.
People hold placards during a protest against Myanmar’s persecution of Rohingya Muslims, in Ahmedabad yesterday.
