India receives Baloch leader Brahumdagh Bugti's request for political asylum

India has received a request for political asylum from Baloch leader Brahumdagh Bugti who has been living in exile in Switzerland.

Brahumdagh is the President and founder of Baloch Republican Party and the grandson of firebrand Baloch leader Nawab Akbar Bugti who was killed in an airstrike by Pakistan in 2006. 

Highly placed sources said the Ministry of External Affairs received the request application from Bugti at their Geneva consulate and has forwarded it to the Union Home Ministry.

The ministry is looking at old records to look into the procedure of giving asylum as India does not have a comprehensive asylum policy. The last time India did so was in 1959 when it gave political asylum to the Dalai Lama. Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen has been living in India since 1994 under a long-term visa renewable every year.

However, sources said the call to give political asylum to Bugti will be taken at the highest level by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as it is a big policy decision that can open a new area of conflict with Pakistan. India may give the Baloch leader the status of head of the state and allow him to run a government in exile, like in the case of Tibetan exiled leader Dalai Lama in 1959.

Meanwhile, Bugti has said that he hopes to get a positive response. 

We hope for a positive response: Baloch leader Brahamdagh Bugti on MHA receiving his asylum request. pic.twitter.com/pH4ECicsI3

— ANI (@ANI_news) September 22, 2016

Ruffling feathers in Pakistan, PM Modi had invoked the Baloch issue in his Independence Day speech this year.