‘Bangladeshis’ and ‘ghuspaithiyas’: BJP MP stops five workers on road in UP, quizzes them on video

The agency that hired them told The Indian Express that they were dailywage labourers hired during Diwali by the local supervisor, for Rs 300 each a day, as permanent staff were on leave.

In the video, uploaded on his Facebook account on Thursday, Lal points towards the five workers, standing in a line with their brooms in hand, and grills them about their identities.

The workers say they hail from different villages in Assam. But Lal replies, “Yeh batate Assam ke hain lekin hain yeh sab Bangladeshi… Woh Bangladesh jo aaj Pakistan ki bhasha bolta hai (They say they are from Assam, but they are Bangladeshi. The same Bangladesh that speaks the language of Pakistan).”

Alleging that settling them amidst the people is like giving an opportunity to the ISI to intrude and spread terrorism, he said, “Yeh sab Ghazwa-e-Hind ka sapna leke aaye hain (They have come with the dream of Ghazwa-e-Hind).”

When some of the workers tried to explain to him that they are registered under the National Register for Citizens, the BJP MP asked them to “be quiet (chup rahiye)”.

He then appealed to UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to deport them as they are a “threat to the nation”.

Justifying the video, shot during his morning walk, he told The Indian Express, “I felt the need to point it out because such a serious flaw was going unnoticed. These people live in jhuggi-jhopris in cities such as Lucknow, Noida, etc. They call themselves Assamese, but no one cross-checks their identities. These people have penetrated our houses… they survey and assist in all kinds of crimes.”

Claiming that such people got the opportunity to live with fake identities because former PM Indira Gandhi did not listen to security advice in 1983, he said, “From my personal experience as police chief and ATS founder in UP, allowing them to settle here is a dangerous development as they come with the intention of Ghazwa-e-Hind. They should be identified and the government should ensure their immediate repatriation to Bangladesh.”

Earlier on Friday, Pankaj Shukla, Lucknow Municipal Corporation’s zonal sanitation officer for Zone 4, said, “We tried to trace these sanitation workers, but the agency deployed for sanitation of main roads in the Zone 4 area, where the video concerned was shot, denied that they are their employees. There could be a possibility that the workers were deployed by other local contractors, who have been given the contract of cleaning the sub-lanes. We are looking into it, but as per norms, employees are appointed by agencies only after checking all credentials.”

The Lucknow Swachhta Abhiyan (LSA), the company hired for door-to-door waste collection and sanitation in the area, denied that the employees worked under them. Raj Karan, LSA supervisor for Zone 4, told The Indian Express, “They are not our employees. We have a proper system of verification, and each of our employees is given a proper appointment letter based on it. Further, our employees also wear proper attire with ID cards.”

The Indian Express later traced the company that had hired these workers. Ranvir, Director of Lions Security Services, which has the contract for cleaning in the internal lanes, said that they were daily-wage labourers and they stopped coming after their permanent employees returned.

“We checked. As our regular workers, who are all registered and wear a proper uniform, were on leave, our local supervisor hired these workers on a daily basis from the nearby jhuggi-jhopri for Rs 300 a day…,” claimed Ranvir.

Hitting out at Lal, Congress leader and corporator Mukesh Chauhan said, “Brij Lal himself was DGP in 2011-2012 in the state, but he did not see any Bangladeshi infiltration then. It is after the BJP government came to power in 2017 that BJP leaders have been finding alleged infiltrators from Bangladesh. This points to intelligence failure both by Amit Shah at the central level and CM Yogi Adityanath at the state, who holds the portfolio of the Home Ministry.”

“Moreover, the sanitation workers tried to say they have NRC registration, but it was ignored. He is raising a question about his own government,” Chauhan said.

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