Now blame game takes over

The Centre had asked Raje government to put Bangladeshis in transit camps

In a tug of between BJP government in Rajasthan and the UPA government at the Centre, the Chief Minister took an offensive posture today by revealing that the Centre had suggested to it to put the Bangladeshi migrants in a "transit camp". In wake of the Jaipur blasts, the role of illegal Bangladeshi migrants has come under the scanner, and Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, in order to evading from taking the responsibility on her government, has made this claim.

Speaking to a news channel, Raje said the state government had written numerous letters to the Centre from time to time on the issue of deportation of Bangladeshi nationals who were finding their way into Rajasthan. To quote her: "We wrote to them in June 2007 to say, look we need to do something about this. We got a reply back from them (Centre) saying, well why don't you just collect them and put them into a transit camp somewhere." In reply, the Chief Minister said, she received such a suggestion from the Union Home Ministry.

Rather than coming together to fight the menace of terrorism, the Congress and the BJP are seem all out to outwit each other in the war of words. Raje's remarks may further strain the relations between the Centre and the BJP-led state government which have traded charges on the issue of intelligence failure following the serial blasts. While the Centre embarks on the fact that it has provided the intelligence inputs, two of the BJP CMs – Narendra Modi and Vasundhara Raje – have chosen to openly criticize the UPA government.

When asked if the Home ministry had formally written to the state government to "round up" illegal Bangladeshis, Raje said, "Yes...kindly round them up and put them in a transit camp, which you pay for". Apparently expressing her displeasure over the Centre's suggestions to set up camps, the Chief Minister admitted it was something like asking the state to "set up its own Guantanamo Bay (where the US security agencies keep terror suspects)".

To a question that under what law the state could detain people in a transit camp, the Chief Minister said, "We have been asking the same question (to the Centre)."

With the needle of suspicion pointing towards Bangladesh-based terror group HuJI in the May 13 serial blasts, the Rajasthan government has launched a manhunt to identify Bangladeshis "having criminal background" in the state within the next 30 days. BJP has been holding Congress-led UPA government's "soft approach" towards terrorism responsible for the terror strike in Jaipur which left 64 dead.

While L K Advani advocating to bring back POTA to contain the terror attacks and Arun Jaitley talks of weak centre as responsible for rising terror attacks on India, the fight against terrorism is getting politicized with the BJP is trying to take the political mileage out of it.

Meanwhile Rajasthan government is planning to deport illegal Bangladeshi migrants from the state. It is to be noted that about 20 million illegal Bangladeshis are living in India.