Deportation may not require legal process: Himanta

way2barak, June 8: Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Saturday said that the state government is exploring the possibility of “pushing back” suspected foreigners into Bangladesh without going through the existing process of identification via Foreigners Tribunals.

To support this, he cited a 1950 law, which was issued before the institution of Foreigners Tribunals in the state. He stated that the Supreme Court, while hearing the question of the validity of Clause 6A of the Citizenship Act, had stated that this law is still in force.

“When the Supreme Court had taken up the matter of Clause 6A of the Citizenship Act, that was under a Constitutional Bench. The Bench had mentioned that… that the Assam government does not have to keep approaching the judiciary in the matter of identifying foreigners. There is an old law called the Immigrants Expulsion Order. The Supreme Court has said that this law is still in force. According to this law, the DC has the authority to issue an order for immediate pushback. For whatever reason, this had not been brought to our notice by our lawyers, and we were not aware of it either. In the past few days, this has come to our attention. So we will discuss this,” he told reporters on the sidelines of an event.