‘Took 1.5 hours just to find records’: Gauhati High Court slams Foreigners Tribunal over shoddy documentation

‘Questions for state government’

The Gauhati High Court, while examining the opinion and order of the Foreigners Tribunal, raised two important questions before the Assam government:

• Why the state government does not give periodical training to its members, as well as the bench assistants, for properly keeping the tribunal’s records?
• If, despite training, the members are not maintaining the records as per the procedure suggested, why should their continued utility not be re-examined by the state on a periodical basis, as is being done for all other state government employees on attaining a particular age?

‘Advisory issued to state government’

• The high court expressed hope and trust that the state government would issue an advisory to all foreigner tribunals to maintain records of evidence and exhibited documents properly to ensure that the records are examined before an opinion is expressed by the tribunals.
• The court was displeased with the manner in which the records had been maintained in this case.
• The tribunal has marked certain documents as “exhibits” which were referred to in the August 2018 opinion of the tribunal, but the same were not mentioned in the opinion of December 2018.
• There are a few exhibits which were signed by the trial court member but the tribunal did not refer to those evidences when they gave their final opinion in 2018.
• The foreigner tribunal’s opinion of 2018 is to be set aside as it has no application of mind.
• The tribunal has not considered the evidence placed on record.
• The matter is sent back to the authority concerned to take it to the stage of evidence.
• The petitioner is directed to appear before the Foreigners Tribunal in March 2026.

• The counsel for the Foreigners Tribunal, advocate J Payeng, has been directed to return the tribunal’s records to the state’s home and political department, along with a downloaded copy of this order to be retained as part of the record.
• The state has been directed to circulate this high court order to all the foreigners’ tribunals in the state.

Significance of 25 March, 1971

• On March 25, 1971, the Pakistan Army launched ‘Operation Searchlight’ in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh.
• It was a military crackdown aimed at suppressing the Bengali independence movement, during which civilians, students, members of the Bengali armed forces, and police personnel were attacked.
• March 26 is now observed as Bangladesh’s Independence Day.

How do foreigners tribunals work?

These tribunals are the authorities that identify illegal immigrants and are quasi-judicial bodies meant to “furnish opinion on the question as to whether a person is or is not a foreigner within the meaning of the Foreigners Act, 1946”.

Such tribunals usually get two kinds of cases:

• Those against whom a “reference” has been made by the border police, and
• Those whose names in the electoral rolls have a D (Doubtful) against them.

In such cases, the accused has to prove that he or she is an Indian.

The apex court, at times, has also looked into the matters and questioned the status of individuals deemed foreigners and placed in detention camps of different states.