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Assam cabinet clears new SOPs to push out illegal immigrants, bypass tribunals
This is a landmark decision, which will provide for ‘fast track action’ against illegal foreigners and “bypass” the existing mechanism
GUWAHATI: Assam will give people suspected of being illegal immigrants 10 days to prove their Indian citizenship and send them to detention camps pending push back to Bangladesh if they fail to comply within this deadline, chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma announced on Tuesday after the state cabinet approved a new set of standard operating procedures (SOPs) under a 1950 law.
This is a landmark decision, which will provide for ‘fast track action’ against illegal foreigners and “bypass” the existing mechanism of such cases being handled by the nearly 100 foreigners’ tribunals (FTs), Sarma said.
The tribunals are quasi-judicial bodies empowered under the law to declare someone as a foreigner.
Sarma said people lodged in detention camps would be pushed out of the country by the Border Security Force (BSF).
The chief minister said the decision to revise the SOP was made in light of the Supreme Court’s October 2024 verdict, a five-judge constitution bench decision that upheld the validity of Section 6A of the Citizenship Act, 1955.
Section 6A is the lynchpin of the 1985 Assam Accord, a tripartite agreement between the Centre, the state, and student groups that drew a curtain on six years of violent protests in Assam over illegal immigration. A bunch of petitioners challenged this law, arguing that Parliament didn’t have the competence to define citizenship and that inscribing a cut-off date for citizenship specifically for Assam was unconstitutional.
Sarma said the top court had also indicated in its verdict that the Assam government was free to use the Immigrants (Expulsion from Assam) Act (IEAA), 1950, to detect and deport illegal foreigners. Under this Act, the district commissioners are empowered by the central government to evacuate any person who is found to be an illegal immigrant.
“Today, the state cabinet has come out with SOPs to implement the Act in letter and spirit,” Sarma said in Guwahati after the cabinet meeting.
As per the SOPs, district commissioners (DCs) and senior superintendents of police (SSPs) would be empowered to expel illegal migrants from Assam using provisions of the IEAA 1950.
A government statement said this would “tackle the unabated illegal immigration from neighbouring countries, thereby safeguarding the indigenous populace”.
“If the DC receives such information from the police or any other source that a person is suspected to be an illegal immigrant, he will direct the person to produce evidence of his citizenship within 10 days,” as per the SOPs.
“If the DC finds that the evidence submitted by the suspected illegal immigrant is not sufficient/ satisfactory to prove his citizenship of India, he will record his opinion in writing identifying the person to be an illegal immigrant, which shall consist of a concise statement of facts and the findings thereof with reasons,” it added.
Following this, the DC shall pass an expulsion order with the direction to remove the illegal immigrant from Assam within 24 hours.
Once a person is identified as an illegal immigrant and has been ordered to remove himself, the DC would refer the illegal migrant to the SSP concerned for capturing their biometrics and demographic details on the Foreigners Identification Portal.
The SOPs on expulsion procedure say that if the illegal immigrants do not remove themselves from Assam despite the expulsion order, the DC, with the assistance of the SSP concerned, shall either keep such illegal immigrant in a holding centre and or hand him over to the nearest BSF post for expulsion.
“Illegal immigrants, if detected near zero line, or within 12 hours from his/her entry in the state, will be pushed back immediately without any further process,” the SOPs added.
The CM added that the ongoing trials in 42,000 cases pending in FTs would continue, but the new SOPs will be used to deal with other illegal immigrants who don’t have pending cases in the tribunals.
As per earlier records, there were 168,000 cases in FTs, but many illegal immigrants whose cases were pending have gone missing.
Sarma said that a total of 30,126 illegal Bangladeshis have been pushed back till date over the past years, adding that the neighbouring country had accepted only 466 persons declared as foreigners by FTs to be their citizens. The CM blamed the Congress for creating the mechanism of foreigner tribunals to deal with illegal immigrants and not implementing the IEAA 1950, which was already there to deal with such cases.
