Titled as The Wretched, the report has been prepared by the Act Now for Harmony and Democracy (ANHAD) and Antarik Visthapit Hak Rakshak Samiti (AVHRS) and is based on a survey done in March 2007.

The report was released during a media briefing by ANHAD’s Shabnam Hashmi and AVHRS’s Ghanshyam Shah, Gagan Sethi and Yusuf Sheikh.

It is for the first time that any survey or report has described the riot-displaced persons as “second-class” citizens. All these displaced people happen to be Muslims living in 72 colonies, 19 scattered clusters and houses in eight districts of the state.

Asked to elaborate, the NGO representatives said it is their inability to return to their native places even after six years that had reduced these people to “second-class” citizens.

“Many of them have become subservient to the wishes of the majority, thus making them virtually second-class citizens¿ The designs of those believing in theory of ‘we’ and ‘they’ had succeeded in Gujarat,” said Sethi.

According to the NGOs, some of these people have also been denied rights like ration cards and election photo identity cards despite orders from the Election Commission of India. The activists said 54 per cent of these displaced people have not received any compensation from the state or Central governments.

They said the economic backbone of these people had been broken after the riots and their standard of living gone down.

Many of them, according to the survey, lost their jobs due to displacement and 16 per cent of their women have been forced to do menial household work to feed their families.

The NGOs said the state government should not look the displacement issue as a Hindu-Muslim question.

Stating that forced migration had always been very dangerous in every society, the representatives said they wanted a strong law and deterrent mechanism on internal displacement to stop migration of Muslims from villages. According to them, Muslims from several villages in Panchmahals district, where the rural pockets were among the worst hit during the 2002 riots, have migrated and settled in towns or villages where Muslims are in majority.