Prashant Patel tweets fake claim: ‘5 crore Bangladeshis, Rohingya infiltrators living in India’ 

A Delhi based lawyer, Prashant Patel Umrao, recently made some bold claims over Twitter that has gathered a lot of attention. In his tweet, he claimed that there are 5 crore Bangladeshi and Rohingya infiltrators living in India illegally.

Bharat with 3000 km Length & breadth, having 100 Cr Hindus, doesn't has 100 Mitre land for Birthplace of Bhagwan Shri Ram.

But 5 Cr Bangladeshi & Rohingya infiltrators are living here illegally.

Irony!

— प्रशान्त पटेल उमराव (@ippatel) January 10, 2019

In less than 2 days, more than 1,600 times it was retweeted and liked more than 3,000 times. This is not the first time Patel has made claims that it had been found false or misleading.

For over almost a decade, it is seen that there is a lack of accurate government data with both past and present governments. In fact, the Union Home ministers have been known to quote wrong figures.

Two incidents have taken place with wrong figures: On July 15, 2004, Sriprakash Jaiswal, the then Minister of State for Home Affairs, under the Congress-led UPA government, reportedly stated in response to a question at the Rajya Sabha that 1.2 crore illegal Bangladeshi immigrants were living in India.

Later, covering up his statement, he said, “the reported figures were not based on any comprehensive or sample study but were based on hearsay and that too from interested parties. Therefore, no realistic figures can be given for illegal Bangladeshi migrants in Assam.”

And then, on 16 November 2016, Kiren Rijiju, the current Union Minister of State for Home Affairs, stated in response to a Rajya Sabha question that 2 crore illegal immigrants from Bangladesh were living in India. Comparing it to Jaiswal’s figure, there is a massive 66.7% increase in the number of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in just a little over a decade.

And in the same response, Rijiju added, “since entry of such Bangladeshi nationals into the country is clandestine and surreptitious, it is not possible to have accurate data of such Bangladeshi nationals living in various parts of the country”.

With a new adapted bill on Citizenship Act, the government was recently asked at the Lok Sabha to state the number of refugees from minority communities (namely Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain and Christian) hailing from neighbouring countries. Rijiju again stressed that no accurate data is available in the absence of an authentic survey

On 5 September 2018, a Kolkata based activist filed an RTI application to the Ministry of Home Affairs, requesting actual figures of illegal immigrants in Bangladesh. In its response, the Union Home ministry failed to confirm the exact figures. You can read the application and the response below, as reported on the Huffington Post.

The influx of Rohingya

Fleeing ethnic cleansing and persecution in Myanmar, the Rohingya population migrated to several South and South-East Asian countries along with some Middle Eastern countries opening their doors to them.

In one of its reports on October 2017, Al Jazeera claimed that approx. of 40,000 Rohingyas may have arrived in India since the 1970s. They cited their own data along with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration as their source.

During the latest Lok Sabha session, the government was asked about the exact number of Rohingyas captured by the Border Security Forces entering India illegally, and Rijiju gave a figure of 478 from 1 January 2015 to 30 November 2018.

So, what about the 5-crore figure?

The 2018 report of World Migration, drawn up by the International Organization of Migration, claims that the total number of immigrants from Bangladesh, whether present legally or illegally, comes to a figure of 32 lakh.

This report also claims that the overall number of foreign-born immigrants living in India would be around 52 lakhs, also include who are staying legally, almost a tenth of the 5-crore figure tweeted by Patel.

So, we have good reason to believe that the 5-crore figure claim has no factual basis whatsoever.

(Courtesy: Boom Live)