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IEAA 1950 explained: In the first known invocation of the Immigrants (Expulsion from Assam) Act, 1950, since the state cabinet approved its implementation earlier this year, the Sonitpur district administration has issued orders directing five people – who had been declared foreigners by a tribunal this year – to “remove” themselves from India within 24 hours.
Following the issue of these orders on Tuesday, police said their whereabouts are unknown and that they are “absconding”. Locals said they left the area and have not lived there for over a decade. The five people include four women and a man.
Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has been pushing for the use of the 1950 law for months. In June, he said his government had decided to use the law to “push back” into Bangladesh people whom district commissioners “prima facie find” to be foreigners, without going through the state’s existing system of Foreigners’ Tribunals (FTs).
The IEAA was a legislation drafted by the Centre – coming into effect on March 1, 1950 – following pressure from the Assam government at the time for measures to check migration from then East Pakistan in the years following Partition. Migration into the region was already a key political issue by then, as it is now, 75 years later.
The Union government drafted the law as citizenship was a Central subject, and delegated powers to the state to expel “undesirable” migrants – the legislation was originally even called the Undesirable Immigrants (Expulsion from Assam) Act.
In the uncertain socio-political aftermath of Partition, the Act sought to distinguish between migrants and refugees, stating that it shall not apply to any person displaced “on account of civil disturbances or the fear of such disturbances in any area now forming part of Pakistan”.
The Act added that if the Centre was of the opinion that the stay of any person in Assam – who was ordinarily resident of any place outside India and had come either before or after the commencement of the Act – “is detrimental to the interests of the general public of India or any section thereof or of any Scheduled Tribe in Assam”, it could direct such a person to “remove himself or themselves” from Assam or India “within such time and by such route as may be specified in the order.”
The IEAA said any officer of the Union government or Assam government could exercise this power.
To what extent was this Act applied?
Its implementation turned out to be short-lived. In his book The Quest for Modern Assam, historian Arupjyoti Saikia wrote that at the same time as this Act was finalised, parts of Lower Assam saw rioting between Hindus and Muslims, with anywhere between 40,000 and 1 lakh Muslims from these areas fleeing to East Pakistan. The Act hence posed problems for many Bengali Muslims who originally were from Assam, Saikia wrote, adding. “… when an old resident was asked to leave his residence in an Upper Assam town within three days (of such an order being issued to the resident) Nehru was furious”.
This incidentally also coincided with the pact signed between Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his Pakistani counterpart Liaquat Ali Khan to ensure the security and rights of minorities in the respective territories of Pakistan and India. On April 10, two days after the pact was signed, Nehru wrote to Assam Chief Minister Gopinath Bardoloi to stop all action under the IEAA, saying the Pakistani PM had also raised the Act in their talks.
“… it would be most unwise to take any action under that Act (the IEAA) now. Our main purpose is to concentrate on getting full control (over) the situation in East and West Bengal and Assam and to remove the sense of fear from the minorities. Everything else should be subordinated to this. If we cannot succeed in this, then all kinds of other problems will overwhelm us,” Nehru wrote to Bordoloi.
According to different accounts, the numbers of those affected by the IEAA remained a couple of hundred.
