Why experts contest Assam CM’s use of 1950 law to justify forcing out people into Bangladesh

Last Monday, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma announced in the Assembly that the state government plans to invoke a law from 1950 to “push back” more suspected foreigners.

As part of a crackdown on “illegal immigrants” in the state, several people declared non-citizens by Assam’s foreigners tribunals were picked up by the police in the last few weeks and then forced out of Indian territory along the Bangladesh border.

Allegedly, all of them were Muslims of Bengali-origin, a community vilified as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, though many of its members have been living in Assam from before Independence.

As families clamoured for information of their relatives, some of whom were surfacing in videos shot in the no man’s land between India and Bangladesh, Sarma confirmed that his government was forcing “declared foreigners” out.

In his statement in the Assembly and subsequent declarations, Sarma doubled down, claiming that the expulsion of declared foreigners was justified in the legal framework provided by the Immigrants (Expulsion from Assam) Act, 1950.

Declared foreigners are not undocumented migrants, or those caught trying to enter India, but people who have lived in Assam for decades and claim to be Indians. However, they have failed to convince foreigners tribunals that their ancestors lived in Assam before March 25, 1971...

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