3,853 stateless Indians, not 300,000 - deputy minister clarifies

PARLIAMENT | Deputy Home Minister Mohd Azis Jamman admitted today that the figure of 300,000 stateless Indians in Malaysia, as claimed by Pakatan Harapan lawmakers pre-GE14, was inaccurate.

As of May this year, Azis said, the Home Ministry had only received 3,853 applications for identification documents.

He added that the estimation of 300,000 was obtained by then-opposition parliamentarians, hence the inaccuracy.

"Today, I stand before the Dewan Negara and state the actual relevant figure on undocumented Indians in this country," he said during the question and answer session at the Dewan Negara today.

Azis said out of the 3,853 cases, 1,638 have been resolved while the rest were under process.

He was responding to BN Senator T Mohan, who questioned where the Harapan lawmakers, including one who is now a minister, obtained the figure.

Mohan pointed out that the claim was among the factors that led to the Indian community voting against BN in the 14th general election.

Last year, DAP lawmakers M Kulasegaran, Charles Santiago and Penang Deputy Chief Minister II P Ramasamy had spoken strongly on the issue of stateless Indians.

In October 2017, the then prime minister Najib Abdul Razak had clarified that only 2,000 Indians in Malaysia were stateless.

The then MIC president Dr S Subramaniam had also criticised Kulasegaran for seeking political support by exaggerating the number of stateless Indians in Malaysia. - Mkini