Uneasy flows Brahmaputra

By striking down the Foreigners Tribunals for Assam Order, 2006, the apex court sets right a politically motivated wrong. The problem of illegal migration must be called by its name. Parties like the Congress must take note

On December 5, the Supreme Court of India struck down the Foreigners Tribunals for Assam Order, 2006, which protected illegal Bangladeshi migrants in the name of protecting minorities from harassment. The Asom Gana Parishad, whose general secretary, Sarbananda Sonowal, was one of the five persons to challenge the validity of the Order, described it as a slap on the face of the Congress. The BJP hailed the Supreme Court as the institution that knows right from wrong.

But there is more to this vexed issue. The UPA government had brought in the Foreigners Tribunals for Assam Order in February this year, after the Congress and its allies suffered a loss of face when the apex court scrapped the controversial Illegal Migrants Determination by Tribunals Act on July 12 last year. The Order itself was violative of the basic tenets of justice, as it provided for two sets of rules or laws to tackle the same issue.

The original IMDT Act, brought into force in 1983, was the genesis of the flawed arguments that the Congress and other parties routinely resort to as they attempt to protect the illegal migrant from Bangladesh and give him precedence over the rights of the indigenous Assamese 8212; nay Indian. The Congress has always demonstrated an enthusiasm to 8216;protect8217; minorities from harassment while showing little or no concern for the indigenous people of Assam who are being reduced to a minority by the migrants from Bangladesh and their predecessors, the people who came in illegally from East Pakistan.

When the Supreme Court struck down the IMDT Act in July last year, it clearly said that the Act was ultra vires to the Constitution and that it served more to protect the Bangladeshi rather than to detect and deport him. The apex court had last year also unambiguously directed the Assam government to set up tribunals under the provisions of the Foreigners Order of 1964. But the Congress-led regime at the Centre amended the very provisions of the Foreigners Order of 1964 and introduced the Foreigners Tribunals for Assam Order 2006, by which the basic necessity that the whole country is governed by the same law in tackling the same illegal migrant was thrown to the winds.

That is why the apex court on Tuesday felt compelled to restate the point it had earlier made on the IMDT Act. It found the notification making the 1964 Order inapplicable to the state of Assam by amending its Clause 2 8220;unreasonable and arbitrary, and violating Article 14 of the Constitution of India.8221; The Supreme Court also pointed out that the Order of 2006 did not serve the purpose sought to be achieved by the 1964 Act or the Citizenship Act or by the obligations cast upon the central government to protect the nation under Article 355 of the Constitution.

But what is more important is the reality of the dangers posed by illegal migration from Bangladesh. These continue to assume alarming proportions, especially in Assam. Seven of the state8217;s 23 districts have already become Muslim-majority, and there is no denying the fact that the root cause is the influx from Bangladesh. While Muslims of East Bengal/East Pakistan or Bangladesh origin today decide the fate of elections in at least 50 of the state8217;s 126 assembly constituencies, the economy of the state itself is gradually slipping into the hands of the migrant.

The ecology of the state is also being badly affected with large tracts of the natural course of the Brahmaputra and other rivers being illegally occupied by people of migrant origin, but the Congress-led government has only issued land settlement documents to the encroachers.

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Successive Union home ministry reports speak of an increase in the clout of Islamic fundamentalist and militant groups in Assam and the Northeast who receive support from Pakistan courtesy Bangladesh. While intelligence reports detail how Islamic fundamentalist and militant groups patronised by Pakistan have been active in Assam, there are also reports about the recruitment and regular dispatch of large numbers of youths belonging to areas dominated by suspected illegal migrants to Bangladesh and Pakistan for arms and other training provided by the ISI, LeT and other organisations.

There have been other warnings as well. A couple of months ago a militant from Assam, who had undergone training in arms and subversive activities in Bangladesh and Pakistan and who had also allegedly worked with Omar Rasheed Sheikh8217;s gang, managed to escape from custody in Guwahati. And then, there is the 1988 report of Lt Gen Retd S.K. Sinha, then governor of Assam, now J038;K governor, which clearly stated that the day was not far when the illegal Bangladeshi migrant, who already dominates Assam8217;s districts bordering Bangladesh, would demand merger of those districts with the neighbouring country!

Yet, the Congress continues to invent newer legal provisions to protect illegal migrants. That the government did not bother to honour the Supreme Court8217;s directive of July 12, 2005 to constitute tribunals in Assam under the Foreigners Order of 1964 was more proof, if more was needed, of the party8217;s insensitivity to the interests and concerns of the indigenous Assamese.