Assam: Deportation hiccups make 1971 cutoff date a farce

Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI: The Supreme Court of India has validated March 25, 1971, as the cutoff date for detection, detention, and deportation of foreigners from Assam as mentioned in the Assam Accord. The moot question, however, remains: how fruitful is the deportation of declared foreigners to Bangladesh from the state? Such a question arises as only around 20 percent of declared foreigners have been deported to the neighbouring country from Assam till last year.

According to official records, as of March 2023, as many as 1,53,129 persons were declared foreigners from Bangladesh but staying illegally in Assam. Only 30,067 of the 1,53,129 declared foreigners were deported from the state to Bangladesh as of March 2023. This is nearly 20 percent of the declared foreigners in the state. However, infiltration from Bangladesh has been a continuous process, and the arrest of as many as 200 Bangladeshi infiltrators in the past three months stands testament to this.

The twin hiccups in the process of deportation of declared foreigners to Bangladesh are: declared foreigners doing the vanishing act and the police not being able to trace most of them, and the red tape on the part of the Bangladesh government in accepting the declared foreigners as their citizens. The infiltrators who get caught while crossing the border are simply pushed back from the spot. The problem, however, lies with the infiltrators, who are declared foreigners from Bangladesh through a legal procedure.

According to sources, there are also cases of progenies of declared foreigners becoming Indian citizens by birth due to the failure on the part of the government to deport their parents in due course of time. Insofar as deportation of declared foreigners does not become a hassle-free affair, recognising March 25, 1971, as the cutoff date for the declaration of foreigners will continue to remain a paradox, to be precise, a liar's paradox.

On September 9 this year, even the Supreme Court of India did ask the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and the Assam Government to spell out as to what measures they had taken for the deportation of the 211 declared foreign nationals detained in the Matia Transit Camp in Goalpara.

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