Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Thursday said the state government has decided to initiate the process of “pushing back” people into Bangladesh within a week of them being declared a foreigner by Foreigners’ Tribunals. He said this was aimed at preventing the process from getting “prolonged” by “them going to the High Court or Supreme Court”.
Speaking about his government’s achievements over the past year and its plans for the future, Sarma said that in the last three months, around 2,000 individuals have been “pushed back” into Bangladesh. He said this system has now been adopted by the state government as a policy with the revival of the 1950 Immigrants (Expulsion from Assam) Act.
“One new decision we have made is that once people are declared foreigners by Foreigners Tribunals, we will push them back within one week so that the whole process does not get prolonged by them going to the High Court or Supreme Court. The moment the Foreigners’ Tribunal identifies them, we will push them back. The moment this begins, we think that the non-compromising attitude against foreigners that was needed for a very long time will get momentum,” he said.
“After the Supreme Court upheld the expulsion of illegal immigrants Act, the state government has made pushbacks a policy. This will enable a change in the whole system concerning foreigners,” he added.
Foreigners’ Tribunals are quasi-judicial bodies that determine whether a person residing in Assam, when presented before them usually by border police or listed as a ‘D-voter’ in electoral rolls, is a “foreigner” or an Indian citizen. Those declared foreigners by these tribunals have the option to appeal against the order by approaching the Gauhati High Court and the Supreme Court. Additionally, the formal process of deportation entails a handover to the authorities of the other country after mutual verification that an individual is a national of that country.
This has meant that while thousands of people have been declared “foreigners” over the years, deportation through this due process has not been a reality. However, since May this year, the government has been “pushing” declared foreigners “back”, which refers to an informal process of pushing people across the international border.
In September, claiming that the Supreme Court had directed the government to employ the use of the long-defunct 1950 Act, the state framed an SOP for its implementation and has invoked it on multiple occasions — directing declared foreigners to leave the country within 24 hours — and has maintained that with this, the “pushback” process has legal backing.
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Sarma said, “The whole problem is that there was no instrument in the hands of the state government to do anything once a person is declared a foreigner. So, a designated jail was made… Ultimately, they would get even more facilities there from the state government than they would get in their villages…”
“No one had the answer to the question of what would happen after they are identified by FTs (Foreigners’ Tribunals). They would be in jail, would get bail two years later, but they would remain within Assam. Now for the first time, the Union and state governments have taken a decision that once someone is declared a foreigner, they don’t have the right to remain in India, and we will push them back,” the Chief Minister said.
He said that with this process, the state government has bypassed the need for a treaty between India and Bangladesh on this issue, something that has long been emphasised as an essential prerequisite for such deportations.
“With this system, we can now expel from 10,000 to 50,000 foreigners, if we can identify them. In the last five years, if evictions were a hallmark of the government, in the next five years, the hallmark will be the number of expelled foreigners,” he said.