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With Jharkhand headed for the Assembly polls in a few months, the issue of alleged Bangladeshi infiltration in its tribal belts has heated up state politics.
The BJP has made it clear that the infiltration narrative would be at the centre of the party’s plank against the Hemant Soren-led coalition government, with its top leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah, already raking it up in their rallies being held across the state. The Soren government comprises the INDIA bloc allies including his party JMM, the Congress and the RJD.
On September 23, during the visit of the Election Commission (EC) members to Ranchi, a state BJP delegation urged them to ensure that alleged infiltrators are not able to vote in the polls. The BJP also demanded that the EC remove Jharkhand home secretary Vandana Dadel from any election-related duty, questioning her “work and behaviour” while alleging that she was “behaving like a political party worker” and not an officer.
The 1996-batch IAS officer, Dadel wrote a letter to the EC on September 2, accusing Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan – the BJP’s co-election incharge for Jharkhand – of allegedly having a “propensity to foment hatred across different communities” and threatening top state bureaucrats. Her letter also attached screenshots of social media posts by Sarma, Chouhan and other BJP leaders, alleging that the BJP was trying to “create communal tension” in the state ahead of the polls.
The BJP has been repeatedly raising the issue of the “Bangladeshi infiltrators” allegedly marrying tribal women, buying land and usurping jobs meant for locals, especially in the tribal-dominated Santhal Pargana region comprising six districts – Dumka, Jamtara, Godda, Sahebganj, Pakur and Deoghar.
Maintaining that the alleged infiltration poses a “threat” to Jharkhand as it is “changing” the identity and demography of its tribal regions, the BJP leaders, including Sarma, has accused the Soren government of “encouraging it for appeasement and vote bank politics”.
Addressing a rally in Kolhan earlier this week, Chouhan even said the National Register of Citizens (NRC) would be implemented in Jharkhand if the BJP comes to power “so that foreign infiltrators don’t make Aadhaar cards and get their names enrolled in voter ID cards”.
The BJP leaders claim that the infiltration issue has created a resonance among the tribals of Santhal Pargana, which accounts for 18 of the state’s 28 Scheduled Tribes (ST)-reserved seats. The party, which has currently only four MLAs there, is looking to make “deep inroads” into the region, which would play a key role in determining the outcome of the elections for the 81-member state Assembly.
In its affidavit on September 12 filed in the Jharkhand High Court – which has been hearing a PIL against alleged Bangladeshi infiltration in Santhal Pargana – the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) stated that the Centre is “concerned and alert regarding the illegal migration in parts of Jharkhand”.
It is the “primary responsibility of the state government to identify illegal immigrants” and that “In this case such support and cooperation of the state government… has been less than expected,” the MHA said.
The ministry’s affidavit stated that the infiltration is “assessed to have taken place” mainly through Sahibganj and Pakur districts bordering West Bengal. “While the Santhal Pargana region had witnessed infiltration of Bangladesh nationals since Independence, of late alleged Bangladesh settlement in districts of Sahibganj and Pakur had been highlighted,” it said, adding that “The infiltrators preferred these areas because of the common dialect which helped their integration”.
The MHA also said that though there were instances of “misuse of loopholes, in existing land law like transfer of tribal land to non-tribal people through an affidavit of ‘danpatra’, by Muslims to acquire land in the region” but “linkages to Bangladeshi immigrants in any of these land-related cases have not been established so far.” This assumes significance amid the state BJP’s allegations against the infiltrators’ bid to claim tribals’ land. Some experts also point out that there is no concept of “gift deed or danpatra” in the existing land law – Santhal Pargana Tenancy (SPT) Act, which bars transfer of land to non-tribals.
While the BJP has alleged that the decline of tribal population in Santhal Pargana has taken place due to infiltration, the MHA affidavit, while noting that the share of the ST population in Santhal Pargana declined from 44.67% in 1951 to 28.11 % in 2011 stated: “However, the quantum of decrease in tribal population due to outward migration, low child birth rate among tribals, conversion to Christianity and other reasons also needs to be assessed.”
Significantly, the Deputy Commissioners (DCs) of Santhal Pargana’s all six districts, in their affidavits filed in the high court, asserted that there was no infiltration of the Bangladeshi immigrants in the region.
Noting the “conflicting” stands taken by the Centre and the state over the infiltration issue, the high court has now ordered the constitution of an independent fact-finding committee to probe the matter.
Significantly, while the INDIA alliance has claimed that the MHA’s affidavit has “contradicted” the BJP’s allegations, the latter has used it to reinforce its stance linking “infiltration” with “tribal population decline” in Santhal Pargana.
Hitting back, the JMM and the Congress have maintained that the BJP needs to answer how infiltration was taking place, if at all, since protecting the international borders is the Centre’s mandate. They have also accused the BJP of “playing Hindu-Muslim politics by stoking tensions before the elections”.
JMM spokesperson Supriyo Bhattacharya alleged that the BJP has created a “state of confusion” in the state. “The BJP has no issue to talk about before the elections, which is why they just talk about infiltrators, contrary to the MHA affidavit,” he said.
