New Delhi: Amid uproar over the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC), the government has slashed budgetary allocation for relief and rehabilitation of refugees and migrants. The relief-andrehab fund is used for rehabilitation of refugees from Sri Lanka, Tibet, Pakistan and Bangladesh (erstwhile East Pakistan).
In 2018-19, the Centre had allocated Rs. 1,047.73 crore for refugee welfare, which was further reduced to Rs. 842.44 crore in 2019-20. This year, Union home ministry has earmarked just Rs. 205.83 crore for the purpose. Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had on Saturday announced allocation of Rs. 1,67,250 crore for the home ministry.
The relief-and-rehab fund, according to officials, is also used for providing assistance to the northeastern states of Tripura, Assam and Mizoram, for giving compensation to the kin of 1984 riots victims, and to assist those who became Indians in the wake of the land swap agreement with Bangladesh.
Since India doesn’t have a refugee policy, Tibetans, Sri Lankan Tamils and West/East Pakistani refugees in Kashmir are granted financial aid on the humanitarian grounds.
According to an official estimate, there are about 1.10 lakh Tibetan refugees in 45 settlements and outside in different parts of the country.
Similarly, 1,02,055 refugees belonging to 34,524 families in Tamil Nadu are living in 107 refugee camps. Sri Lankan Tamils started coming to India after 1983, following their persecution in Sri Lanka.
As per an estimate, at least 1.34 lakh Sri Lankan Tamils arrived in India between 1983 and 1987. After former PM Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination by the LTTE in 1991, an estimated 54,000 refugees were repatriated to Sri Lanka.
As per the Tibet rehabilitation policy, they have been provided agricultural land on lease by state governments.
Handicrafts centres were set up in Dalhousie, Dharamshala, Shimla, Kullu (Himachal Pradesh), Darjeeling (West Bengal) and Rajpur (Uttarakhand). The state governments have been advised to extend several state and central government schemes, such as MNREGS and Indira Awas Yojana, to them.
Source: Economic Times
