The Jammu and Kashmir, High Court has given six weeks to the government to identify immigrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh who are illegally staying in the Union Territory and banish them as soon as possible.
The case filed by advocate Hunar Gupta, a bench comprising Chief Justice Pankaj Mithal and Justice Moksha Khajuria Kazmi who passed the order on public interest litigation(PIL)
“We direct the secretary home, UT of J&K to consider the matter and to evolve a mechanism for the identification of all illegal immigrants and to prepare a list after identifying them.
According to government data, over 13,700 foreigners, including Rohingya and Bangladeshi nationals, are settled in Jammu and Samba districts of Jammu and Kashmir, where their population has increased by over 6,000 between 2008 and 2016.
Earlier, senior counsel Sunil Sethi, appearing for the petitioner, said though it is very easy to identify such illegal migrants, the government should come up with a complete mechanism for identifying them and submit a list of all such immigrants to the court.
The court noted that one of the orders dated May 24, 2017 passed in the PIL indicates that at that time the government had constituted a group of ministers to examine the various issues relating to illegal migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh.
