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Nearly 300 illegal Bangladeshis pushed back from Assam, says CM Himanta Sarma
Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said the process to push illegal Bangladeshis back to their country will continue as per provisions of a 1950 law to identify and evict illegal foreigners
GUWAHATI: Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said on Monday that his government has pushed back nearly 300 illegal Bangladeshis to the neighbouring country in the past few months.
Addressing a one-day special session of the state assembly, Sarma said that the process to push them back will continue as per provisions of a 1950 law to identify and evict illegal foreigners.
“We will adopt two roads to deal with illegal foreigners. One is to take their cases to foreigners tribunals and the other to use provisions of the Immigrants (Expulsion from Assam) Act, 1950,” Sarma said.
“We have pushed back almost 300 people till now and none of them have returned. This process will be intensified and expedited..The way fundamentalist elements from Bangladesh have taken roots in Assam, the government needs to be more active and proactive in this regard,” he added.
Sarma stated that his government has decided to enforce provisions of the 1950 Act into action and empower district commissioners to identify and push back illegal Bangladeshis without referring to the foreigners tribunals.
Assam has 100 such tribunals where people deemed to be illegal foreigners and who have entered the state after March 25, 2025 (the deadline set to identify illegal immigrants in the state) are referred to and their cases heard.
Once they are declared as foreigners by these tribunals they are sent to detention centres set up for such illegal foreigners. They have the option of appealing their cases in higher courts with proper documents.
In recent weeks, following directives from the union home ministry, several state governments, especially those ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), have started drives to detect illegal Bangladeshis and initiate a process to deport them.
Many such people, who are allegedly illegal Bangladeshis, have been pushed back to the no man’s land between India and Bangladesh through the borders in Assam, Tripura and West Bengal. Last week, Bangladesh had refused to accept 14 such people from Assam, who were again sent back.
