May 6, 2003	Tuesday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 3, 1424

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DHAKA, May 5: The High Court of Bangladesh directed the Election Commission on Monday to enrol 10 stranded Pakistanis, including three women, living at the Geneva Camp, in the voters’ list, considering them citizens of Bangladesh.

The HC’s division bench, comprising Justice Hamidul Haque and Justice Zinat Ara, passed the order in a judgment on a writ petition filed by Abid Khan and nine others, including three women, now living at the Geneva Camp, in Dhaka’s Mohammadpur neighbourhood, as stranded Pakistanis.

The court observed in the judgment that these people should be treated as citizens of Bangladesh, as they were born in Bangladesh.

According to the judgment, the legal experts argue, all of the people now living in the camps in Bangladesh as stranded Pakistanis, excluding those not born in Bangladesh, might have the right to be enrolled on the voters’ list.

At present, about 2,00,000 people are living in different camps in Bangladesh as stranded Pakistanis, most of them born in Bangladesh.

The 10 people applied to the EC to be enrolled in 2001 prior to the October national elections. The EC did not do so, considering them as non-citizen residents.

They filed a writ petition challenging their non-enrolment, and a High Court division bench issued a rule nisi on the EC and the government on July 14, 2001.