THE Government of India has treated different refugee and migrant groups differently. Tibetan and Sri Lankan Tamils are recognised as refugees by India directly while the cases of Burmese, Afghans, Iranians, Somalis are determined by the UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees). India, being a non-signatory to the Refugee Convention and not having any policy/law of its own, creates conditions for this arbitrariness. Additionally it makes the existence of the UNHCR tenuous. The agency is not allowed to document and protect refugees in the North-Eastern States, nor is it permitted to entertain claims of any Bangladeshi or even a Sri Lankan.
The numbers of Bangladeshi migrants has been a contentious issue. The then Union Home Minister, L.K. Advani, put out in 2002 an astronomical number of 20 million6 in the whole of India. Before the NDA Government the Union Home Minister of the UF Government, Indrajit Gupta, had claimed in Parliament in 1997 that there were four million of them in Assam and 10 million7 in the rest of India.
Suspected Bangladeshis are treated in the most inhuman way.