“Anyone who speaks Bangla is suspected to be a Bangladeshi,” Anisur Rahman, a 44-year-old garment seller, said with a hint of sarcasm. For over 20 years, Rahman has been a resident of Bangali Basti – a slum of nearly 1,500 shanties located in a corner of the Vasant Kunj locality in Delhi.
Like Rahman, the majority of the residents of the slum hail from the north Bengal districts of Cooch Behar and Alipurduar. Over the last few weeks, they have had to give proof of their citizenship to the police. Twice since the last week of December, the police have conducted drives in Bangali Basti to check documents like Aadhaar card, voter ID card and ration card of those living in the slum.
“The police even went to my village in Cooch Behar to check if the address on my Aadhaar card was genuine,” a woman who requested anonymity, told Scroll.
The police action in Bangali Basti of Vasant Kunj is not an isolated affair. Since December, the Delhi Police have been conducting these drives in many Bengali Muslim-dominated localities on orders given by Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena. On December 10, Saxena had directed the Delhi chief secretary and police commissioner to launch a two-month drive to identify and take action against “illegal immigrants from Bangladesh” living in the national capital.
With the Delhi Assembly elections to be held on February 5, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Aam Aadmi Party have raised the matter as an election issue. Both parties have blamed each other for allowing undocumented Bangladeshis in the national capital.
The political rhetoric and the police action have left many Bengalis who have migrated to Delhi in the danger of being branded as “illegal Bangladeshi immigrants”. Across two localities, both called Bangali Basti – the Vasant Kunj slum and a colony in North West Delhi’s Jahangirpuri – Scroll witnessed resentment and anger among the residents.
How did the police action start?
After the Delhi lieutenant governor ordered a drive to identify undocumented Bangladeshi immigrants, media reports said the directive had been given on demands made by a delegation of Muslim clerics. The reports, however, did not name any cleric. The official website and the X handle of the lieutenant governor also do not have any details about the meeting.
Mohammad Hakimuddin Qasmi, the general secretary of Muslim body Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind, told Scroll that nobody from his organisation was part of the said delegation.
Nonetheless, the police were prompt to act on the lieutenant governor’s directive. By the first week of January, the police had questioned over 5,000 people and screened their documents. The police have also deported around 30 persons back to Bangladesh for allegedly staying illegally in India, according to media reports. The Delhi Department of Education has also asked schools to inform the police and other authorities in case of any doubts over a student’s citizenship status.
An officer at the Vasant Kunj police station confirmed that media reports about the deportation were true. Those deported were first produced at the Foreigners Regional Registration Office in Delhi’s RK Puram area, the officer said. He, however, declined to comment on the legal proceedings that led to the deportation, or where the people ended up after being deported.
At the Foreigners Regional Registration Office too, the officials refused to speak on the matter. “These proceedings are private,” an official told Scroll.
‘We are not Bangladeshis’
The Bangali Basti in Vasant Kunj is home to about 5,000 people, mostly Bengali Muslims, who have migrated from north Bengal. Even after more than two decades since people started settling in the area in the late 1990s, the slum is deprived of basic amenities like proper housing, drainage and sanitation. The residents, most of whom work as domestic workers, rag pickers and delivery agents in posh colonies of South Delhi, were perplexed when the police first came in the third week of December to check their documents.
Anisur Rehman, the garment seller, said that around the year 2000 was the last time when such a drive was conducted. Back then, the police had found five or six Bangladeshi families which were living in the locality without proper documents, Rehman said. “They were sent back to Bangladesh,” he added. “But we are not Bangladeshis, our forefathers had come to [West] Bengal [from Bangladesh] decades ago.”
In the first week of January, the police once again carried out a screening of documents in the locality. This time, six people were taken to the Vasant Kunj police station even as they produced their Aadhaar cards and other documents to prove their citizenship. One of them, 43-year-old Jahangir Sheikh, told Scroll that they were kept at the police station for a day without food and water.
“They kept asking us to help identify Bangladeshis who live here,” said Sheikh. “What am I supposed to say when there are no Bangladeshis here?”
At the Vasant Kunj police station, police officers denied that people had been picked up from Bangali Basti.
Sheikh’s helplessness in the face of police action was echoed by residents of the Bangali Basti in Jahangirpuri too. Even though the locality has the same name, the Jahangirpuri colony is better off in terms of amenities and standard of living. Most of the residents here live in concrete homes and work at private firms or own businesses, the locals said. They are, however, as vulnerable as the Bengali Muslims of Vasant Kunj when it comes to being scrutinsed on the question of citizenship.
Earlier in January, the police checked documents of nearly 500 families living in three alleys of the locality. The Jahangirpuri Bangali Basti is spread over 10 parallel alleys. Loton Bibi, a 32-year-old resident of Jahangirpuri, told Scroll that her family has been living in Delhi for 15 years. “My ancestral home is in Haldia [in West Bengal], we do not have any connection with Bangladesh,” she said.
Her neighbour Mijanur Islam joined in: “If the police find any Bangladeshis here, they are free to take them away. But why should I prove that I am Indian? Just because I am a Bengali? People come to Delhi from all states. Why are they not asked to show their Aadhaar card?”
The politics of ‘Bangladeshi infiltrators’
Besides checking documents of Bengali Muslims across the city, the Delhi Police have also questioned an Aam Aadmi Party legislator as part of its crackdown against illegal immigration from Bangladesh. The police have claimed to have seized recommendation letters bearing signatures of Rithala MLA Mohinder Goyal during their raids. These documents were used by Bangladeshis living illegally to procure Aadhaar cards, the police have alleged.
On January 12, BJP leader Smriti Irani cited this at a press conference to allege that the AAP was facilitating the “infiltration of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants” into India. In retaliation, AAP Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh said that Union Home Minister Amit Shah should be held responsible for “Bangladeshis and Rohingyas” infiltrating into India as border security was the responsibility of the Centre.
These statements from the main contenders in the Delhi elections show that the bogey of so-called illegal Bangladeshi immigrants is an electoral flashpoint between the two parties. On ground, Scroll found that Bengali Muslims viewed the BJP as the party instigating the issue. However, there were some voices holding the AAP responsible too.
Mohammad Aslam, the muezzin of a mosque in Bangali Basti of Vasant Kunj, pointed out that Kusum Khatri, a BJP councillor in South Delhi had claimed that 15,000 Rohingya Muslims were living illegally in the locality. “The BJP wants to do Hindu-Muslim politics ahead of the elections, so she is making these statements,” Aslam said. “How did Rohingyas come up? I have not seen a Rohingya Muslim in my life.”
Aslam’s neighbour Jakir Hossain, who migrated to Delhi 14 years ago from the Darrang district of Assam, is among the few Bengali Muslims from the northeastern state who live in the Vasant Kunj slum. A team of the Delhi Police went to his home in Darrang to verify the address on his Aadhaar card. Hossain said he was concerned when he learnt about this because Assam is ruled by the BJP. “In Bengal, there is Didi [Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee], but Himanta [Biswa Sarma, Assam chief minister] is competing with Yogi [Adityanath, Uttar Pradesh chief minister],” Hossain said. “I was scared that the police in Assam might say that my address was fake.”
Even as many like Aslam and Hossain said that the BJP was targeting Bengali Muslims, Jahangir Sheikh pointed out that the AAP too was speaking in the same voice as the Hindutva party. “[Arvind] Kejriwal is also saying that infiltrators are coming in Delhi,” he said.
Among the nearly 5,000 residents of the Vasant Kunj slum, about 1,000 to 1,200 are voters in Delhi, the locals said. In the last two elections, they have voted for the AAP. Would the AAP’s stance on Bengali Muslims change that? The locals said they were not left with no choice as the BJP was not an option and the Congress hardly had any presence in the Mehrauli Assembly seat, under which the slum falls.
But in the Badli constituency, which comprises the Bangali Basti of Jahangirpuri, Congress could emerge as a popular choice at least among Bengali Muslims. The locality was plastered with fliers and posters of Congress candidate Devender Yadav, who has been the party’s candidate on the seat for all Assembly elections since 2008. Even as he last won in 2013, Yadav garnered over 26% votes in the 2015 polls and nearly 20% in 2020.
Mijanur Islam, the Jahangirpuri resident, also said there were talks among the locals about shifting their loyalties from the AAP to Congress. On being asked what had prompted these talks, Islam also said that the AAP had not done enough to resist the BJP’s anti-Muslim rhetoric. “Our MLA has won two times and he has not done a lot of developmental work either,” Islam said. “And his party also talks about Bangladeshi infiltrators and Rohingyas like the BJP. Why should we vote for him?”
