The Assam government has “pushed back” 303 “foreigners” and will continue to do so under the 1950 Immigrants (Expulsion from Assam) Act, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said on Monday.

“Another 35 is in our hand and they will be sent once the [flood] waters recede,” the Bharatiya Janata Party leader told the state Assembly. “The Supreme Court clearly said the illegal expulsion act is valid and if the government wishes, they can expel the foreigners without going to Foreigners Tribunals.”

Sarma’s remarks in the Assembly came two days after he claimed that persons declared foreigners were being “pushed back” to Bangladesh under a legal framework.

The Supreme Court, while hearing the challenges to Section 6A of the 1955 Citizenship Act, had said that “there is no legal requirement for the Assam government to always approach the judiciary in order to identify foreigners”, Sarma had told reporters on Saturday.

In October, the Supreme Court had upheld the constitutional validity of Section 6A of the 1955 Citizenship Act.

Section 6A was introduced as a special provision under the Act when the Assam Accord was signed between the Union government and leaders of the Assam Movement in 1985. It allows foreigners who came to Assam between January 1, 1966, and March 25, 1971, to seek Indian citizenship.

Indigenous groups in Assam have alleged that this provision in the Act had legalised infiltration by migrants from Bangladesh.

On Monday, Sarma claimed in the Assembly that the Supreme Court’s judgment on Section 6A “has given sweeping powers to the Assam government”.

“The Supreme Court has said that 1950 act remains valid and operative,” Sarma said. “By the order of the court, every deputy commissioner is empowered to evict anybody whom he feels is a foreigner. This is an infallible weapon given to the state government by the Constitutional bench.”

The BJP leader also noted that the Supreme Court had also criticised the state government for not deporting alleged foreigners. “So there is a pressure from the Supreme Court on the state government to act on the expulsion of the foreigners,” Sarma said.

Stating that 303 persons had been “pushed back”, he added that the action would be intensified under the 1950 law, Sarma said.

“If a deputy commissioner finds prime facie evidence against a person that is an illegal foreigner, that person can be expelled to Bangladesh or pushed back without referring to the Foreigners’ Tribunals as per the illegal expulsion act 1950,” Sarma said.

The chief minister also told the Assembly that two to four persons, who had received a stay from the Supreme Court and the High Court against their deportations, were also “pushed back”.

“Through the diplomatic channel, we have also brought them back,” Sarma added.

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Deportations

On May 31, the chief minister confirmed that Assam was “pushing back” to Bangladesh persons who have been declared foreigners by the state’s Foreigners Tribunals.

Foreigners Tribunals in Assam are quasi-judicial bodies that adjudicate on matters of citizenship. However, the tribunals have been accused of arbitrariness and bias, and of declaring people foreigners on the basis of minor spelling mistakes, a lack of documents or lapses in memory.

Sarma’s May 31 statement had come against the backdrop of an increase in detentions of declared foreigners in Assam since May 23. Families say they have no information on their relatives’ whereabouts. Some of them have identified their missing relatives in videos from Bangladesh, alleging they were forcibly sent across the border.

Sarma had claimed that the process of pushing back foreigners was being taken as per the directives issued by the Supreme Court in February.

On February 4, the Supreme Court directed the state government to start the process of deporting foreign nationals being held in the state’s detention centres immediately.

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