Foreign underhand

Migration of Muslims from erstwhile East Bengal and East Pakistan has bothered Assam since before independence. But several attempts to throw them out were subverted or stopped with opposition not just from the migrants, but also the Congress.

Though the Congress won the 1983 assembly elections, what it could not win was the confidence of the Assamese people. Thus one of the first things Chief Minister Hiteswar Saikia did was annouce the construction of a 72-km long wall—later modified to a barbed-wire fence—along the Indo-Bangladesh border.

Saikia also suggested to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi that the illegal migrants issue be settled by establishing tribunals that would identify and expel all those who crossed over after March 1971. Reputed lawyer Abdul Muhib Mazumdar drafted the Bill and on October 15, 1983, the Centre promulgated an ordinance directing setting up of tribunals ‘‘for determination… as to whether a person is or is not an illegal migrant, to enable the Central government to expel him/her from India’’.

The Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act, passed by Parliament on December 12, 1983, made India the only civilised country to have two laws for foreigners and migrants: one (the Foreigners Act, 1946) applicable to the rest of the country and the other (IMDT Act) applicable only to Assam.

Moreover, while under all other laws, the onus of proof lies with the accused, the IMDT Act placed the burden on the complainant. ‘‘It… ensured that all illegal migrants in other states move to Assam because it is the only state from where they cannot be deported… (for) this law is designed to protect the illegal migrants by pretending that they are minority citizens,’’ wrote D N Bezboruah, a former president of the Editors’ Guild of India, in his famous three-part series titled ‘Our Land, Their Living Space’ over a decade ago.

Several eminent people, including Lt-Gen (Retd) S K Sinha, former Assam governor, have said that the IMDT Act, instead of detecting and deporting migrants, was more suitable for protecting and legitimising them. The Law Commission, in its September 2000 report, too recommended its repeal.

No doubt the Centre’s affidavit in the Supreme Court (when the NDA was in power) said that while half a million illegal migrants could be identified and deported from West Bengal (where the IMDT Act was not applicable), only 1,500 could be deported from Assam till 2001. In 22 years, this figure touched just 1,538! And all this for an expenditure of nearly Rs 400 crores.

Parkash Singh, former DGP of Assam and UP and also former DG of BSF was even more specific. ‘‘This was a mischievous piece of legislation which took away the powers of issuing ‘Quit India’ notices, arrest, interrogation, etc from the police and passed on the burden of proof also, unlike in the Foreigners Act, to the police. The joke is that even the deported subsequently managed to come back!’’ he said in 2003.

The striking down of the Act has is now bound to have a long-lasting impact on Assam politics. The Congress, which has always backed the Act, might lose the support of even the genuine Indian minorities, not to speak of the lakhs of Bangladeshi migrants who enrolled themselves as voters in the state. Several minority organisations have already held the Congress responsible for the repeal of the Act.

The AASU-AGP camp, on the other hand, is likely to gain, because repealing the Act is their old demand. The BJP, too, is claiming credit, despite the fact that it made a feeble attempt to repeal the Act by tabling a Bill only towards the fag-end of its term.

While it was former Assam advocate-general P G Baruah who first challenged the validity of the Act in Guwahati High Court in September 1992, it was the All India Lawyers Forum for Civil Liberties which took the matter to the Supreme Court in 1998. But one person who is getting a hero’s welcome in Assam today is Sarbananda Sonowal, an AGP MP, whose powerful petition filed in April 2000—when he was AASU president—actually turned the tide against the Act.