Biggest Detention Centre with a capacity to hold 3,000 detainees coming up at Goalpara

September 9: Construction work has started on the state’s first detention centre for those who do not quality as Indian citizens. The centre will be built at a cost of Rs 45 crore in Goalpara, with a capacity to hold 3,000 detainees. Goalpara district in Assam will be home to the country’s biggest detention centre and is being constructed on 28,800 sq ft of land that will accommodate foreign convicts, people declared ‘foreigners’ and will be operational by early 2020.

At present, Assam has six detention centres that are run out of district jails. Apart from the Goalpara camp, 10 more detention centres will come up in Assam which are- Karimganj, Barpeta, Dima, Hasao, Kamrup, Lakhimpur, Nagaon, Nalbari, Sonitpur and Sivasagar.

The final NRC list of Assam’s National Register of Citizens (NRC) was published on 31 August, 2019. Out of a total number of 3,30,27,661 applicants, the names of 3,11,21,004 were included in the final NRC. That means a total of 19,06,657 persons were excluded from the NRC.

It is important to understand that nobody can be labelled an illegal migrant, or a non-citizen just because their name did not find mention in the National Register of Citizens. Only a foreigners tribunal, a quasi-judicial body especially set up to solve matters of dubious citizenship, has the right to give a verdict on someone’s citizenship. It is this body, a resident should approach to dispute the exculsion of their names from the government’s list within 120 days.

The state government has initiated establishment of 200 additional foreigners’ tribunals to deal with NRC appeals and references; another 200 will be set up in the coming three months.