Assam’s crackdown on suspected foreigners: A legal shortcut with serious risks

The issue of detection and deportation of illegal Bangladeshi migrants has triggered a fresh controversy with the State government launching a crackdown on suspected illegal nationals through an administrative process.

Some such foreigners had been pushed back to no-man’s land on the Indo-Bangladesh border but many of them have since returned. While the opposition rapped the government on the arbitrary action, which is a departure from the normal method of detecting foreigners through a judicial process, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma sought to justify the action stating that the crackdown was being done under the Immigrants (Expulsion from Assam) Act, 1950, which empowers Deputy Commissioners (now called District Commissioners) to take action on suspected foreigners. Much water has flown down the Brahmaputra since 1950 and the changing circumstances, including the Assam Accord-mandated cut-off date of March 25, 1971, had resulted in the establishment of a judicial detection and deportation process for illegal migrants.

Over a lakh people have also been declared illegal Bangladeshis by the Foreigners Tribunals between 1985 and 2018.

Determining the citizenship status of an individual is too serious and complex a matter to be left to a few government officers or a politically motivated government. Due to the laxity of successive governments in detecting and deporting illegal migrants, the issue invariably acquired complexities and humanitarian aspects.

Entrusting DCs with the task of detecting foreigners definitely made sense at the initial stage of the problem decades back, but not under the present circumstances. The sudden crackdown on suspected illegal foreigners has rightly triggered criticism from all the opposition parties on the ground that the exercise has been arbitrary and high-handed – something tantamount to a violation of the fundamental rights of the victims.

Such an exercise is likely to be whimsical and biased – the worst part being that the victims cannot defend their case in a court of law. It also raises the question concerning the very objective behind the setting up of the many FTs for detecting foreigners. One may also recall that following the recent updating of the NRC, the State government had announced that it would set up more FTs to expedite the detection and deportation of illegal foreigners. The saner course of action on the part of the Assam government would be to hasten the legal process for detection of illegal foreigners by strengthening the judicial set-up for the purpose.