New Delhi: Bangladesh on September 23 lodged a protest note with India over comments made by Indian home minister Amit Shah regarding Bangladeshi nationals during a rally in Jharkhand.
Last Friday, Amit Shah had accused the Hemant Soren government of allowing migrants – whom he called “infiltrators” – to take over the state at a rally in Shahganj. Jharkhand is set to hold assembly elections later this year.
“Infiltrators are the vote bank of Lalu Prasad’s RJD [Rashtriya Janata Dal], Rahul baba‘s [Rahul Gandhi] Congress and chief minister Hemant Soren’s Jharkhand Mukti Morcha. I promise to drive out illegal immigrants. The time has come to show the corrupt JMM dispensation the exit door…We want to change Jharkhand,” he said.
Stating that the BJP will deal with “Bangladeshi infiltrators” by hanging them upside down, Shah asserted, “Tell me if this land belongs to tribals, or Rohingya and Bangladeshi infiltrators. No one can save Jharkhand, neither JMM nor Congress. It is only Prime Minister Narendra Modi who can save it.”
His remarks were picked up by the Bangladeshi media and widely reported there.
On Monday afternoon, Bangladesh’s foreign ministry summoned Indian Deputy High Commissioner Pawan Badhe to its office.
“Through the protest note handed over today [23 September] to the Deputy High Commissioner of India in Dhaka, the ministry conveyed its serious reservation, deep sense of hurt and extreme displeasure and called upon the Government of India to advise the political leaders to refrain from making such objectionable and unacceptable remarks,” reads a Bangladeshi statement.
It noted that the foreign ministry “emphasised that such remarks, coming from responsible positions against the nationals of a neighbouring country, undermine the spirit of mutual respect and understanding between two friendly countries”.
In September 2018, Amit Shah had also stoked anger in Bangladesh by calling Bangladeshi migrants as “termites”. However, while then Bangladeshi information minister under Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had expressed regret, there was no official protest lodged with India. The home minister had again used the same term for illegal migrants in April 2019.
