Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Sept 6: The Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has issued fresh advisory to all States, where Rohingyas have settled, including Jammu and Kashmir, calling for keeping strict surveillance on them following inputs that they could fall into the hands of militants and indulge in ‘anti-national’ and ‘anti-social’ activities.
Sources told the Excelsior that the fresh advisory came within days of the MHA’s direction for preparing complete data of Rohingyas for their deportation back to Myanmar. The advisory, according to sources, has listed series of measures that the State Governments can take to keep track on the illegal immigrants, mostly Rohingyas.
“The State Governments have been asked to keep track on the colonies of Rohingyas including the people visiting them, their work places, nature of their job and whether all of them were regularly being spotted in the colonies or missing,” sources said, adding that this was necessitated after an alert sounded by the Intelligence agencies that some militant outfits could try to radicalize young Rohingyas and then trap them into the militancy by promising them better life.
However, sources clarified that so far no incident of Rohingyas joining the militancy or other kind of anti-national activities has been reported from any State including Jammu and Kashmir. Despite this, the Union Home Ministry wants the State Government to keep activities of Rohingyas under strict surveillance to ensure that till they are deported, they don’t become threat to security.
Sources said the States have been asked to keep vigil on colonies and work places of Rohingyas and ensure that they don’t fan out to more places as it would be easy to keep track on them at few places.
Few days back, the Home Ministry had asked the administration to complete profiling of Rohingyas, putting up in Jammu and Samba districts, within a month and forward it to them as the Centre was under intense pressure not only in Jammu and Kashmir but also in some other States on deportation of Rohingyas.
Details sought by the MHA included total number of Rohingyas settled in Jammu region, the places they are living in, time since they have settled here, their actual addresses in Myanmar and Bangladesh, facilities provided to them here, total number of families and related information.
It has also sought information pertaining to the work being done by Rohingyas and Bangladeshis here and whether they were involved in criminal activities or militancy and could pose security threat to the State, which has already been faced by the Pakistan-sponsored militancy.
Sources said during profiling, the State has come across certain startling figures, which indicated that number of Rohingyas and Bangladeshis has gone up from 5700 to 6300 in just one year.
Asserting that majority of Rohingyas, settled here, possessed UNHRC cards, sources said it was being ascertained as to whose direction these cards were issued.
However, preliminary investigations by the administration have revealed that it was during the tenure of UPA-II at the Centre when P Chidambaram was the Union Home Minister and it was National Conference-Congress coalition Government in the State when UNHCR cards were issued to Rohingyas for their settlement in Jammu and Samba districts. But, the sources pointed out that number of Rohingyas has swelled during the course of time and efforts were on to find out whether all of them had duly come after issuance of UNHCR cards or settled here illegally after crossing the border.
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