On Tuesday, the court rapped the state for not initiating the process of deporting 63 individuals who have been declared foreigners by Foreigners Tribunals on the ground that their addresses are unknown.
Who is at the camp?
A break-up of individuals at the camp accessed by The Indian Express shows two categories of “foreigners” among the 270 inmates. There are 103 Rohingya people, 32 Chin people and an individual from Senegal who had been referred to sessions courts where they were sentenced and convicted for violations of the Foreigners Act, the Citizenship Act and the Passports Act. These individuals are citizens of other countries, and after completing their sentences in prisons, they have been placed in the “transit camp” while awaiting deportation.
The rest of the 133 inmates have been declared “foreigners” by Foreigners Tribunals in Assam – quasi-judicial bodies that determine whether or not a person presented before them is an Indian citizen. The tribunals receive two kinds of cases – those referred to them by the border police when they suspect someone of being a foreigner and those related to people listed as “doubtful” voters in electoral rolls.
According to a senior Assam government official, 70 of these 133 declared foreigners have “admitted to being Bangladeshi nationals” and have shared addresses in Bangladesh. Another individual has been released on bail. However, the 63 people who the Supreme Court referred to have not shared an address.
The challenges
“The process of deportation is a diplomatic issue and a central government matter. The role of the state government is limited to referring the matter to the Ministry of External Affairs,” said an official.
Story continues below this ad
“In all these cases, we have to fill a nationality verification status report and send it to the MEA, which sends it to the embassy or high commission of the other country. Once the embassy tells us that the individual is indeed a national of that country and the address is correct, we hand them to the BSF, which takes it up with the paramilitary force of the other country… In all other cases, we have sent the reports to the MEA, but these 63 people have not divulged an address in Bangladesh, where we believe they are from,” said the official.
Following the Supreme Court’s reprimand, the state government is now looking to refer the list of these individuals to the MEA this week by simply filling in “Bangladesh” as the address, said the official.
This story was originally published in indianexpress.com. Read the full story here.
