Over 60,000 People Declared 'Foreigners' in Assam without being Heard

New Delhi, July 3, 2019:

Minister of State (Home) G Kishan Reddy on Tuesday informed the Lok Sabha that a total of 63,959 people in Assam had been declared 'foreigners' by the Foreigners Tribunal, through ex-parte proceedings from 1985 to Feb 28, 2019.

He made this revelation is response to a series of queries in response to senior Congress leader and Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor.

Tharoor had posed the following questions:

(a) the total number of detention centres set up to hold “doubtful voters” and “foreigners” in the State of Assam;

(b) the total number of people detained in these detention centres;

(c) the number of persons who have been kept in these detention centres for more than a year;

(d) the number of persons who have been kept in these detention centres for more than three years;

(e) the number of people who have been kept in these detention centres with access to free legal aid from the Government; and

(f) the number of people who have been declared foreigners through ex-parte proceedings by the Foreigners’ Tribunals in Assam?

In response to Tharoor's queries, G Kishan Reddy informed that only 1133 people who were “declared foreigners” had been detained in the six detention centres in the State of Assam. Out of this, 769 people had been kept for more than a year, and 335 people have kept for more than three years.

He also added that free legal aid is being provided to detenues by District Legal Service Authority who are in need of it.

The revelation that such a great number of people have been declared 'foreigners' without

All Assam Minorities Student's Union (AAMSU) adviser Azizul Haque while speaking to Inside Northeast alleged that maximum number of these people are from Middle and Lower Assam. "They go to Upper Assam seeking better employment opportunities, and police ask them about their details. They stay there for a short and come back, but cases are registered against them. Thus, they unknowingly become tagged as 'foreigners'", he said.

"Government says that they are absconding, but they are residing in their own villages", he adds.

Haque says that there os a 'trend' in Assam of looking at Bengali speaking people with suspicion, and the administration have been asked to identify the people who came here after 1971. "They are unable to identify the actual foreigners, but target these random people without interrogating these people", he said.

"In the case of Sanaullah, for instance, the police officer himself said that he had never set his eyes on Sanaullah. There are lakhs of Sanaullahs out there", he alleged.

The AAMSU adviser says that authorities are fully aware of the situation, but continue to turn a blind eye to it.

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