About 800 Declared Foreigners in Assam’s Detention Centre

At present, Assam has six temporary camps for aliens located at Kokrajhar, Goalpara, Jorhat, Tezpur, Dibrugarh and Silchar. These camps are attached to the jails in the respective towns, and there are about 800 declared foreigners/D voters in these six detention camps. Against this background, the Supreme Court has directed the Assam government to expedite the process of constructing a permanent detention centre for “foreign nationals” in the State that will be able to accommodate about 3,000 inmates. This is merely a reiteration of an earlier directive to all States in this regard. But what is significant is that no reiteration of its earlier communication in this regard to other States has been deemed necessary by the Centre. In fact, the Government of India’s earlier communication in this regard was sent to all State governments on September 10, 2014. A statement from the Government of India in this regard says: “A communication was sent as far back as on 10th September, 2014 to all State governments for setting up of detention centres/camps for restricting the movement of illegal migrants/foreign nationals awaiting deportation/repatriation after completion of sentence due to non-confirmation of nationality.” The bench, however, observed that not a single State had set up such camps. This is what the bench of the apex court concerned had to say: “We are not at all surprised that not a single State has set up detention centre/holding centre/camp. Unfortunately, this includes the State of Assam which has a very large number of illegal immigrants/foreign nationals.” This is a very typical attitude of our bigwigs and courts that has greatly undermined the very process of dealing with the illegal immigrants in India in a fair manner. Illegal immigration of foreign nationals in India is a national problem regardless of the State where illegal immigration is most numerous. It will simply not do to dismiss this as Assam’s problem or Bengal’s problem merely because the illegal immigration of foreigners has been most numerous in these two States. In fact, the statement of the Supreme Court bench that says “We are not at all surprised that not a single State has set up detention centre/holding centre/camp,” speaks volumes of the attitude of the Centre—and sadly of the attitude of the Supreme Court as well—to the entire problem of illegal immigration of foreign nationals to India. If anything, the next sentence (“Unfortunately, this includes the State of Assam which has a very large number of illegal immigrants/foreign nationals.”) merely serves to underscore the kind of unjust assumptions that even the Supreme Court seems to support. Granted that it may be the responsibility of the State police force to deal with the illegal immigration of a few hundred or even a few thousand foreigners; but when such illegal immigration constitutes lakhs of migrants, the Centre clearly has a duty to step in and lend the required support to the State’s police force. The Supreme Court’s views on the problem (unfortunately shared by the Union government as well) seems to be that since the bulk of the illegal immigrants from Bangladesh are in Assam, the problem must be left to Assam to tackle. What is very conveniently overlooked is that the bulk of the illegal immigration from Bangladesh is to Assam because of the proximity of Assam to Bangladesh. After all, illegal immigrants from Bangladesh can hardly be expected to make the long and expensive trip to States like Punjab, Maharashtra or Karnataka when they migrate to India. They will naturally migrate to the parts of India nearest to their own country. Anyone who has observed illegal migration among European countries has also noticed that that when illegal migrants cross an international border they stay as close to their own countries as possible. This also makes return to their own country that much easier if there is a crackdown on illegal foreign migrants in the country they moved to. In all fairness, the Supreme Court should direct not only Assam but other States as well to expedite the process of setting up permanent detention centres for aliens and follow up this initiative by directing all Indian States to take a hand in solving the problem of large-scale illegal immigration to India.