Rohingyas are national security threat: Government in Supreme Court

NEW DELHI: The government on Monday termed the presence of Rohingya refugees in India as a threat to national security and urged the Supreme Court to refrain from interfering with any decision to deport them.

The government is under constitutional obligation to deport any illegal immigrants and allowing the Rohingyas to stay in India would encourage influx of other such illegal immigrants as well, an affidavit filed by the home ministry said. The joint secretary (foreigners) in the ministry, Mukesh Mittal, filed the document shortly after the court adjourned hearing in the case to October 3.

Those who spoke in the court against any move to deport the Rohingyas were senior advocates Fali S Nariman, Rajeev Dhavan, Kapil Sibal, Colin Gonsalves and Prashant Bhushan.



A three-judge bench, led by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, however, refused to issue any notice for now to the National Human Rights Commission on the matter as they demanded, saying it would have to first examine whether it had the jurisdiction to deal with the issue. The Rohingyas have accused the Myanmar’s government of ethnic cleansing. Some of them in India filed petitions in the top court apprehending deportation.

Their lawyers argued that the Indian Constitution guaranteed right to life and liberty to even non-citizens and that deporting the Rohingyas would mean sending them to near-certain death. Responding to a court notice on their plea, the government said it had a constitutional duty to ensure that the demographic and social structure of the country was not changed to the detriment of its citizens.