The central government has assured Meghalaya that immigration from troubled Bangladesh will not be allowed into the state.
Informing that he had already written to Union Home Minister Amit Shah and met him personally, Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma today said, “I have got a categorical reply and message from him that nobody will be allowed to enter our borders. One and two incidents here and there are different issues but we are not going to see any kind of a formal large-scale immigration or movement of people from Bangladesh coming in”.
The CM said that the situation is “slightly” more stable now in Bangladesh than it was at the height of the protests against the former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
“We are also seeing trade normalising at the border area. These are good signs. I don’t expect we will see any major challenges in the coming days but we should be alert, careful,” he added.
Pressure groups in the state have been raising concern of a possible influx and had even petitioned the Centre to ensure that not a single Bangladesh national should be granted asylum or be rehabilitated in the North East.
Informing that he will be going to Delhi for a GST council meeting on September 9, Sangma said that he will meet Shah again and will stress “on the need to strengthen and re-sanction and reallot more projects for border area development” because it is not enough just to make sure that the borders are impregnable but also to improve the lives of Indian citizens living in these areas.
Meghalaya shares a long 400km-plus border with Bangladesh, of which around 50km is unfenced. The state government held meetings with the Border Security Force (BSF), army and police and special stress was laid on these unfenced sections, Sangma informed.
