New Delhi: A fresh plea was today filed in the Supreme Court favouring the Centre’s stand to identify and deport to Myanmar around 40,000 illegal Rohingya Muslims staying in the country.
The plea may be heard by a bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra which is already considering various petitions, including the lead PIL filed by two Rohingya Muslim refugees, Mohammad Salimullah and Mohammad Shaqir, challenging their deportation.
The apex court has already fixed the earlier pleas for detailed hearing from November 21.
The latest plea has been filed by Binay Kumar Singh, a national executive member of BJP’s Kisan Morcha, T Raja Singh, a BJP MLA from Goshamahal in Telangana and Sunil Kumar, who claims to be an activist.
They have sought impleadment as parties in the ongoing matter and alleged that the illegal Rohingya immigrants are not refugees but should rather be seen as “aggressors/ invaders”.
The plea has raised the issue of Rohingyas settled in Jammu and Kashmir saying Article 370 of the Constitution imposed restrictions on Indians but these people have been allowed to stay there.
“If Indians are not allowed to stay in the State of Jammu and Kashmir then even the illegally immigrated Rohingya community cannot be permitted to stay nearby the sensitive Pakistan border,” it said.
“No foreign national or power may be permitted to force our hands to let them live here as they like. The (Rohingyas) petition makes an outrageous demand that people who have not obtained refuge, who have not been granted refuge, but are admittedly illegal immigrants be accorded shelter by the nation. It plainly is a blatant disrespect to India’s sovereignty…,” the plea said.
The Rohingya immigrants, who have filed the PIL, had claimed they had taken refuge in India after escaping from Myanmar due to widespread discrimination, violence and bloodshed against the community there.
Besides the present plea, former RSS ideologue and Rashtriya Swabhiman Andolan leader K N Govindacharaya has also moved the Supreme Court seeking to intervene in the pending PIL on Rohingyas.
The Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI), the youth wing of the CPI(M), has also moved the court and opposed the Centre’s move to deport Rohingyas, saying the deportation of Rohingya children would be in violation of the provisions of the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
–PTI