Northeastern View | How Assam’s citizenship deprivation regime abets unjust forced deportations
It is incumbent on the Supreme Court to take a comprehensive look at the existing system of citizenship deprivation in Assam.
On May 16, the Supreme Court of India asked the central government to take “immediate steps” to deport 17 people declared foreigners by Assam’s Foreigners Tribunals (FT) and are currently lodged in a foreigner detention centre – officially known as a ‘Transit Camp’ – in the state’s Goalpara district.
Less than a week later, another bench of the court, headed by the Chief Justice of India, halted the deportation of Maya Rani Barman, who belongs to the Rajbongshi community and was declared a foreigner by one of Assam’s many FTs in 2019.
In Assam, the quasi-judicial FT regime, by virtue of a 1964 executive order, has the power to create a special category of non-citizens called “Declared Foreigners” or “Declared Foreign Nationals (DFN)”. These are distinct from the “Convicted Foreign Nationals (CFN)” who are marked out as such by regular judicial courts for entering India without valid papers and thus, violating the Foreigners Act, 1946.
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