Amid ongoing protests over the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and a proposed pan-India National Register of Citizens (NRC), the BJP-led central government is onto the next stage that involves deporting illegal Rohingya migrants. As the new law fastracks the citizenship to non-Muslim refugees from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, illegal migrants from other countries will be treated as infiltrators and deported, Union Minister of State (MoS) in the PMO, Dr Jitendra Singh, said. 

The Union minister said the Centre’s next step in the direction is the deportation of Rohingyas from the country.

"The CAA is applicable across the country including in J&K. By implication what will happen here is that the next move will be in relation to the Rohingyas. They have to leave, details being worked out. This act doesn't give them leverage," MoS Singh said on Friday while speaking at a function in Jammu.

He stressed that the CAA is applicable across the country, including the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, since the day it was passed by the Parliament as the erstwhile state does not have the special status granted under Article 370 of the Indian Constitution.

Noting that a sizeable population of Rohingyas resides in Jammu, Singh said that a list will be prepared and their biometrics will also be collected.

The Union Home Ministry claims that there are roughly 14,000 Rohingya refugees in India registered with the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR while an estimated 40,000 of them are living in India illegally.

According to the government figures, more than 13,700 foreigners, including Rohingya Muslims and Bangladeshi nationals, are settled in Jammu and Samba districts. Their population has increased by over 6,000 between 2008 and 2016. 

Rohingyas started to flee Myanmar in late 2011 following alleged persecution by the Myanmarese armed forces. As Myanmarese army stepped up a brutal military crackdown in 2017 against the population in 2017, more than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled the country's Rakhine state since then.  

Most of them have shelter in camps in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar, pushing the number of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh to above 1.2 million.