JKL High Court Directs J&K's Chief Secretary To Identify Illegal Immigrants From Myanmar & Bangladesh Living In UT

The Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh High Court has directed the Secretary Home, Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir evolve a mechanism for the identification of all illegal immigrants and to prepare a list after identifying them in 6 weeks.

The bench of Chief Justice Pankaj Mithal and Justice Moksha Khajuria Kazmi issued this order on a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) plea seeking moved by Advocate Hunar Gupta who sought an inquiry to be conducted to identify all illegal immigrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh who have migrated from there and have settled in the Union Territory.

The Court noted that earlier, the Government had constituted a Group of Ministers to examine the various issues relating to illegal migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh in the State of Jammu and Kashmir.

Further, the Court noted that in May 2017, the Group of Ministers was supposed to take up the matter, examine it, and to furnish a report thereof, but the same wasn't done and in the meantime, the State of Jammu and Kashmir was bifurcated and the UT of J&K had been created.

The Senior Advocate Sunil Sethi appearing for the petitioner Gupta submitted that though it is very easy to identify such illegal migrants, but the Government should come up with a complete mechanism to identify them and submit a list of all such immigrants before the Court.

On the other hand, AAG Raman Sharma accepted that the Government would try to do the identification and for that purpose evolve a robust mechanism.

In view of the aforesaid facts and circumstances, the Court directed the Secretary Home, UT of J&K thus:

"...to consider the matter and to evolve a mechanism for the identification of all illegal immigrants and to prepare a list after identifying them. The said exercise may be carried out, most promptly, within a period of six weeks."

With this, the matter has been listed for further hearing on July 15, 2022.

Cass title - Hunar Gupta v. State of J&K and Others

Click Here To Read/Download Order