SC ruling on ‘foreigner’: TMC MP Sushmita Dev knocks on CM’s door

A Correspondent

SILCHAR: Citing the recent observation of the Supreme Court in the case relating to Rahim Ali, the TMC MP Sushmita Dev had sought the intervention of the Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma to instruct state police to refrain from random issuance of foreigner notice to anyone without sufficient material proof. On July 11, a two-judge bench of the Apex Court, while hearing the case filed by Md. Rahim Ali against the Assam government, ruled that the state police cannot proceed against any person randomly suspecting him of being a foreigner without sufficient material backing such an allegation.

Citing this observation of the Apex Court, Sushmita, in a letter to the Chief Minister, said that a simple allegation cannot lead to the shifting of the burden to the accused unless the concerned person is contradicted by such an allegation.

“The court has stated that without primary or basic material, the authorities should not initiate proceedings that have life-altering and serious consequences for the person where the basis is simple hearsay of bald and vague allegations,” Sushmita mentioned in her letter, reminding that in Ali’s case, the ground was a mismatch of the actual English spelling of the name and mistakes in dates.

Maintaining that since the Chief Minister also holds the home portfolio, Dev said she was hopeful that the court’s ruling seeking a certain basic standard of proof before the law-enforcing authority could accuse a person of being a foreigner would receive due attention by the state government. She said that many poor and uneducated people often become victims of such investigations and are pushed to the Foreigner Tribunal without proper material. Since the litigation was an expensive affair, the concerned person was left with much financial as well as mental harassment. Admitting that the foreigner issue was a sensitive matter, Sushmita said that the court ruling was clear enough that Section 9 (Termination of Citizenship) of the Citizenship Act must be exercised cautiously.

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