A division bench of the Calcutta High Court has sought a report by July 16 on the issue of the alleged deportation to Bangladesh of six migrants from Bengal, including three minors, after they were apprehended by the Delhi police. Bengal’s chief secretary has also been asked by the court to get in touch with the Union home ministry to furnish details of this case. In a separate incident, two leaders of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) have sent a letter to the Union home minister, alleging that residents of a slum in North Delhi were being subjected to harassment by the police on the suspicion of being illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Residents of another slum in the capital city, Jai Hind Camp — mostly domestic labourers, many of them Muslim, from Bengal’s Cooch Behar district — who are facing a legal eviction notice, suspect that they are being targeted on account of being Bengali. In the meantime, in Odisha, 403 of 447 workers from Bengal who had been detained — was their detainment legal? — have been released. The detainees have recounted, among other traumas, repeated demands for documents to prove their Indian citizenship.
This chain of incidents coalesces around some major concerns. First, it appears that the security and the rights of some sections of Bengal’s migrant workers are under strain. There can be no argument against an institutional crackdown on illegal immigrants. But targeting bona fide citizens from a particular state — were religion and ethnicity the markers used for identification? — by the administration sets a dangerous and unethical precedent. Bengal’s chief minister has already spoken up on the issue and used it to target the Bharatiya Janata Party; the BJP, too, is returning fire. It will not be surprising if this alleged discrimination leads to further strain between Bengal and other BJP-ruled states. The political optics are to be expected with a year to go before assembly elections in Bengal. But politics is unlikely to be a saviour for migrant workers; they usually serve as political fodder. The authorities must make sure that legitimate citizens of Bengal who earn a living as migrant labourers in other states are spared harassment of any kind. This is not only a matter of their rights and dignity but also of inter-state harmony.