Bangladesh News

A high profile inter-ministerial meeting will decide today whether the Urdu-speaking stranded Pakistanis living in Bangladesh will be given citizenship and national identity cards.

The home ministry which is under Chief Adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed has convened the emergency meeting. Top officials of different ministries and agencies are expected to attend the meeting to examine legal aspects of the issue, sources said.

Earlier, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) ATM Shamsul Huda sent a proposal to the chief adviser to urgently settle the issue of about three lakh stranded Pakistanis living in the country.

“The matter of deciding the citizenship of the people in the camps is very urgent for the reason that after introduction of the National Identity Card as a condition for delivery of a number of services, these people may lose access to many services they currently enjoy. Even renewal of a rickshaw licence would require presentation of an ID and no ID will be issued to a person who is not a citizen of Bangladesh,” CEC Huda said in a letter to the chief adviser on June 29.

Secretary to the office of chief adviser and secretaries of the ministries of foreign, law, justice and parliamentary affairs, and food and disaster, Election Commission (EC) Secretariat, inspector general of police (IGP), director general of DGFI, director general of National Security Intelligence, director general Immigration and Passport Directorate, additional IGP (special branch) and legal adviser to the law cell of the home ministry have been invited to attend the meeting.

Home Secretary Abdul Karim will preside over the meeting to be held in the conference room of the home ministry.

In his letter to the chief adviser the CEC said immediately after the independence of Bangladesh two streams of Urdu speaking people were found in Bangladesh. One group, known as “stranded Pakistanis”, had sworn their allegiance to Pakistan and wanted to go back to that country at any cost. Others accepted the emerging reality and swore their allegiance to Bangladesh and merged with the mainstream society and polity.

Of the 3,00,000 Urdu speaking people living in Bangladesh, 1,60,000 live in 116 camps set up by the International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) in different parts of the country. Many of them were born after 1971 or were minor in that year, said Huda in the letter.

“As far as the EC is concerned, there is no problem with regard to the Urdu speaking people living all over the country outside the ICRC camps. They are citizens of Bangladesh and have been listed in the electoral rolls by following the criteria set for the purpose. However, the commission is unable to register the Urdu speaking people living inside the camps as voters due to complications relating to their citizenship,” sources said quoting Huda’s letter.

The CEC said the commission has pondered over the issue and feels that time has now come to look at the issue objectively and with compassion. “The case of Urdu speaking people need to be separated from the ’stranded Pakistanis’ and a decision of their citizenship may be taken expeditiously,” CEC Huda said.