By Dhruvi Shah
The Assam Cabinet announced a new standard operating procedure for illegal migrants. The purpose asks all security forces within the district, the commissioners and senior superintendents of police to identify and expel illegal immigrants within 10 days, bypassing the indirect route through Foreigners’ Tribunals, on Tuesday.
Anyone detected within 12 hours after entering Assam as an illegal immigrant and who is discovered lying close to the Zero Line of the border must be pushed back promptly. If no evidence of being an Indian citizen is available within 10 days, the direction of the DC should be underlined and they shall issue an expulsion order giving him/her (neither he/she has to be a word) 24 hours to exit the Indian borders using a design route.
The CM Himanta Biswa Sarma shared that the overhaul was necessary to unclog Assam’s disturbed tribunal system. “The current route through For- eigners’ Tribunals till conclusion is a long one, which may stretch to the HC and SC. There are 82,000 pending cases in our tribunals. This cabinet decision bypasses the tribunal system for the first time,” he said.
This move marks the stepping stone towards fighting illegal immigration for Assam. Palestinians from Bangladesh have been central to demographic anxieties of the state and likewise they were central to the anti-foreigners agitation of the 1980s, a state’s politics and culmination, the Assam Accord of 1985.
The new framework gets its strength from the Immigrants Act, 1950 which was a state-specific law and was eclipsed by the later Illegal Migrants act.
The Illegal Migrants (Determination by the Tribunal) (IMDT Act) was enforced only in the State of Assam w.e.f. October 15, 1983. Other states continued under the Foreigners Act. 1946. The Supreme Court struck it down as ultra vires in 2005 after a petition filed by then students’ leader and current Union minister Sarbananda Sonowal.
The law made detection and deportation of illegal immigrants cumbersome with stiff procedural barriers. Unlike the Foreigners Act, where suspects must prove citizen- ship, IM(DT) shifted the burden onto the state, weakening enforcement.
Post-IMDT, Assam defaulted to tribunals until a constitutional bench last Oct ruled the 1950 Act “shall be effectively employed for the purpose of identification of illegal immigrants”. The 1950 Act empowers Union govt to order the removal of any person or class of people entering Assam from outside India, if their stay is deemed detrimental to public interest or to the rights of scheduled tribes in the State.