New Delhi: The Central government on Tuesday told the Supreme Court that Rohingya refugees - who are mostly Muslims - cannot claim asylum on the ground of parity with Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists who were given this reprieve after they fled Pakistan and Bangladesh due to religious persecution.
Submitting an affidavit in the Court, the government maintained there were many factors that require to be considered before allowing a set of illegal immigrants to enter and stay in India, and no other group can allege discrimination in these matters.
"Considering the very nature of such a decision which are to be taken on a case-to-case basis, there cannot be any comparison or claim of discrimination based upon some earlier decision taken with respect to one set of illegal immigrants vis-à-vis another set of illegal immigrants," stated the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) in its affidavit.
The MHA was responding to a contention raised by some of the Rohingya petitioners in SC that the Indian government, by a notification in September 2015, had allowed illegal immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh to stay in India without valid travel documents after they fled their countries due to fear of religious persecution. This notification clearly mentioned "Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Jains, Parsis and Buddhists" who were compelled to seek shelter in India.
The petitioners called it discriminatory that the government was not extending the same relief to Rohingyas who also had to flee Myanmar due to persecution.
But the government has shot down this argument, stating that these administrative decisions are taken on a case-to-case basis and that there cannot be any claims based on parity.
"Any administrative decision taken by the executive with respect to illegal immigrants in question in each case depends upon the variety of reasons, empirical data, facts, potential danger to internal security, the number of illegal immigrants involved, disturbances in the social fabric of the country or any particular part thereof, possibility of law and order problem arising in the country or any part thereof, demographic changes and its extent etc," maintained the affidavit.
The MHA added that the administrative decision to relax rules for Hindus and other minority groups fleeing Pakistan and Bangladesh cannot be compared with the decision with respect to Rohingyas who are about 40,000 in number, "having other options, and most disturbingly the continuing of a systematic influx of illegal immigrants in an organised manner into India through agents and touts".
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