Our correspondent
Kohima | July 19
Identifying the menace of illegal migration especially from Bangladesh, the Angami Students’ Union (ASU) today carried out a surprise checking of Inner Line Permit defaulters in Kohima town. The union detected thirteen ILP defaulters. The ASU took the opportunity to vent its annoyance at the district administration’s attitude to this issue, and termed the attitude of the district administration as ‘not serious.’ An unhappy ASU even sought from the state government to show records what the latter has even done to address the issue.
Strongly questioning the sincerity of the state government with regard to illegal immigrants, the ASU general secretary asked the state government to show records of their actions. “If they are sincere enough in what they are doing, it will be good if they show us the data and record to the public,” he said.
Interacting with media persons today, the ASU officials said that the regulated and implemented Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation Act of 1873, being enforced in the state of Nagaland was to safeguard the identity and culture, ‘unabated invasion of our socio-economic, moral and identity by illegal immigrants and over proportion of non-locals in the society is taking place.’
ASU president Voto Nikha said that although the union has been initiating various measures to check the gradually heightening predicament, the government is not ‘co-operative towards the influx of immigrants’.
In a startling disclosure, the ASU informed that during the first phase of verification last July-August, 9462 persons were found with proper documents while 127 were found as illegal immigrants/without proper documents.
Not surprisingly, there are serious lacunas. For instance, illegal immigrants have been found with multiple stamps on photos, making it hard to identify the person; the Act, legislated in 1873 have even been misprinted as ‘1837’; there are also instances of improper guarantors, inconsistent, unchanging or unmentioned age of ILP holders, dubious permanent addresses overwriting and multiple spelling “mistakes”.
Taking strong note of these issues, ASU said that although the government does not want ASU to carry out this issue, the union is doing it for welfare as the issue of illegal immigration concerns all Naga citizens.
“During the first phase of verification, we have found 127 illegal immigrants and the government failed to give the cooperation we seek”, said Voto Nikha. The flow of “lucrative business” has made it worse to verify the immigrants said Union Assembly Secretary Thepfulie Theünuo.
“The migration scenario in India, Nagaland state government have not mentioned the exact figure of immigrants, correct record or statistics, and since the government failed on their part as they hardly bother to check the ILP they issued,” said general secretary Neingusolie.
“We Nagas are a good Samaritans, very generous and hospitable, crazy of foreigners, giving shelters to outsiders without realizing our responsible to protect undesirable greed in exchange for monetary game, as for survival, the immigrants spread their wings in robbery, killings, crime amongst women”, said the president.
ASU also said that the ILP validity is only for 15 days (Maximum 30 days) and after the expiry of the validity period they are bound to leave the state, or apply for fresh ILP. ASU has assured that surprise checking will be carried out from time to time.
