But the threat remains

The Constitutional Bench of the Supreme Court, in its October 17 verdict, may have put to rest all controversies about the cut-off date for detection and deportation of illegal migrants in Assam. But that does not in any way allay the genuine fears of Assam’s indigenous people that the immigrants—both pre-1947 and post-1947—pose a grave threat not just to their existence but also to India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. This is not the first time that midnight on March 25, 1971, has been declared as the cut-off date for detecting illegal migrants in Assam. The recent verdict has only reiterated the cut-off date fixed by the Congress regime in 1985. This newspaper has, since the signing of the Assam Accord in 1985, questioned how two different laws can be applicable for the same set of foreigners in the country. Fixing 1971 as the cut-off date has led to nowhere that has been well established; no person identified as a foreigner with 1971 as the cut-off date has been deported. Parliament and the Assam Legislative Assembly have been informed numerous times that most persons confirmed as foreigners and/or illegal migrants by various courts of law have “vanished” by mingling with the people of a community similar to them. The lead news story of this newspaper on Sunday has pointed out the twin hiccups in the process of deportation of declared foreigners to Bangladesh: (i) declared foreigners doing the vanishing act and the police failing to trace most of them, and (ii) the inability of the Government of India to compel Bangladesh to accept the declared foreigners as its citizens. Moreover, for several political parties and organizations in this country, illegal migrants who are part of the demographic invasion are dearer than the indigenous people. In this context, it is also pertinent to note certain observations of the Supreme Court’s latest verdict. At one place it says that the Assam Accord was a “political solution to the issue of growing migration,” and at another place it says that “the immigration to Assam presented the Union (government) with a unique problem in terms of magnitude and impact.” The apex court has also noted that “though other states, such as West Bengal (2216.7 km), Meghalaya (443 km), Tripura (856 km), and Mizoram (318 km), share a larger border with Bangladesh as compared to Assam (263 km), the magnitude of influx to Assam and its impact on the cultural and political rights of the Assamese and tribal populations is higher.” But, despite the fact that the Supreme Court has in its latest verdict put a formal stamp on midnight of March 25, 1971 as the cut-off date for deportation, and despite the fact that the Supreme Court had in its verdict of July 12, 2005 (Sarbananda Sonowal vs. Union of India) struck down the notorious Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act of 1983, the cut-off date, as defined in the IMDT Act, continues to remain effective. This in turn confirms that while the controversy over the cut-off date has been laid to rest, the massive threat posed by illegal migrants not just to the Assamese and other indigenous communities of Assam but to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country in the Northeast remains as it is. There is no second opinion on the fact that the number of illegal migrants and their progeny is increasing at a compound rate, which has compelled the Assam Chief Minister to state that the immigrant Muslims will attain a majority status in the state by 2045. Consider this with what former Assam Governor Lt Gen (Retd) SK Sinha had apprehended in his famous and well-drafted report on illegal migration to the President of India of November 8, 1998. He had written thus: “This silent and invidious demographic invasion of Assam may result in the loss of the geostrategically vital districts of Lower Assam. The influx of these illegal migrants is turning these districts into a Muslim-majority region. It will then only be a matter of time when a demand for their merger with Bangladesh may be made. The rapid growth of international Islamic fundamentalism may provide the driving force for this demand. In this context, it is pertinent that Bangladesh has long discarded secularism and has chosen to become an Islamic state. Loss of Lower Assam will sever the entire land mass of the Northeast from the rest of India, and the rich natural resources of that region will be lost to the  nation.” He had also clearly stated that “the dangerous consequences of large-scale illegal migration from Bangladesh, both for the people of Assam and more for the nation as a whole, need to be emphatically stressed. No misconceived and mistaken notions of secularism should be allowed to come in the way of doing so.”