In a letter to the Telangana Director General of Police (DGP), the state BJP on Monday said that it has maintained for many years and has even submitted memos about how Hyderabad and the rest of Telangana have become “safe havens” for Rohingya Muslims, and that the matter wasn’t given “due importance”.
The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) recently issued letters to 127 persons in Hyderabad, asking them to provide documents to prove their Indian citizenship. The central agency claimed that they were not Indian nationals and acquired the card under “false pretences”. While this caused an uproar, the UIDAI said that the 127 people received the letters after the police approached them, stating that there were illegal immigrants who were "not qualified to obtain an Aadhaar number”.
Out of these 127 people, the BJP has now claimed that 124 are Rohingyas.
“124 is not even a minuscule of the number of the illegal immigrants staying in Telangana. There are credible reports that thousands of Rohingyas across Telangana have secured Aadhar card, voter ID card and ration cards. Many of them are even getting pensions under various state welfare schemes, too,” the Telangana BJP said in the letter.
Terming them “non-Indians”, the BJP stated that such people securing “all such cards is a matter of serious concern but unfortunately, the state government, it appears, hasn't viewed the issue with adequate seriousness”.
It further stated that “some of these illegal immigrants may be under “anti-national forces such as the ISI, Al-Qaeda and may carry out operations to disrupt peace and progress and to destabilise the nation (sic)”.
The BJP demanded a probe into the matter, and said there must be a team of officers in all Telangana districts to weed out illegal immigrants, including “the large chunk of Rohingyas”.
Incidentally, targeting Rohingyas in Hyderabad is something that the BJP in Hyderabad has been doing for many months.
In September 2019, Minister of State for Home Affairs G Kishan Reddy said that the state government had informed the Centre that there were 6,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees in the state.
“We have heard reports about them having obtained Aadhaar cards, too, and police cases were filed. We are securing reports from other states, too, about the Rohingyas. It has nothing to do with religion but the fact is that we have to provide food and shelter to our own large population first,” he had said then.
The BJP has demanded that the National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise be carried out in Telangana, and has earlier said that the issue of illegal immigrants is a “ticking time bomb”.