Kolkata: The Bangladeshi migrants’ exodus from India through cross-border to their homeland has shot up drastically in the first month of 2020 in wake of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) becoming a law in the country in sharp contrast to that of the last two years.
The trend was revealed in a data shared by the Border Security Force at its South Bengal Frontier Headquarters in New Town on Friday. The BSF has caught 268 Bangladeshis out of 308 persons for allegedly trying to cross the Indo-Bangla border in illegal ways till date this year in West Bengal. “This is an interesting aspect because out of them, almost 90 per cent were about to sneak into Bangladesh. It certainly reflects a substantial increase from the past two years’ figures in the Bangladeshi migrants’ outgoing,” BSF (South Bengal Frontier) inspector-general Y.B. Khuranyia said while replying to a question on the CAA-impact on the Bangladeshi migr-ants’ exodus.
He added, “The number has increased because of the steps we have taken along the border.” Mr Khuraniya also informed that Ghojadanga in North 24 Parganas was the area where Bangladeshi mig-rants were often found trying to cross over to the other side of the border. According to BSF sources, the home-bound Bangladeshi migrants were largely from Karnataka and some other southern states of the country. In comparison to the current month’s data, the number of the Bangladeshi nationals caught by the BSF at the Indo-Bangla border in 2018 stood at 1,677 out of 2,330 persons, the statistics shows. It however rose to 2,194 out of 3,065 persons last year. The trend of the Bangladeshi migrants was however opposite then, according to the BSF officials who pointed to their inflow.
Khuraniya said that the BSF has identified 20 locations in the unfenced areas along the 913.32 km-long border for enforcing a single-row-fencing measure to curb infiltration.
