Home ministry gives powers to district magistrates to constitute their own foreigners’ tribunals 

A foreigners’ tribunal in Assam’s Goalpara.

New Delhi: The ministry of home affairs laid out specific guidelines to detect, detain and deport foreign nationals staying illegally across India, with Assam’s National Register of Citizens as the backdrop.

It gave unspecified and unprecedented powers to the foreigners’ tribunals (FTs) – the quasi-judicial authority that assesses the question of authenticity of a person’s citizenship.

The new Foreigners (Tribunals) Amendment Order 2019, allows all states to constitute their own FTs, earlier unique to Assam, to address the question of citizenship of a person. The amendment empowers district magistrates in all states and Union territories to set up tribunals to decide whether a person staying illegally in India is a foreigner or not. Earlier, the powers vested only with the Centre.

While the 1964 order on Constitution of Tribunals said, “The Central Government may by order, refer the question as to whether a person is not a foreigner within meaning of the Foreigners Act, 1946 (31 of 1946) to a Tribunal to be constituted for the purpose, for its opinion,” the amended order issued on May 30 says, “‘for words Central Government may,’ the words ‘the Central Government or the State Government or the Union Territory administration or the District Collector or the District Magistrate may’ shall be substituted [sic].”

A senior government official said, “Earlier only the state administration could move the tribunal against a suspect, but with the final NRC about to be published and to give adequate opportunity to those not included, this has been done. If a person doesn’t find his or her name in the final list, they could move the tribunal.”

As per directions of the Supreme Court, the registrar general of India published the final draft list of NRC on July 30, 2018 to segregate Indian citizens living in Assam from those who had illegally entered the state from Bangladesh after March 25, 1971.

However, the NRC is a fallout of the Assam Accord, 1985, because  as many as 36 lakh of those excluded have filed claims against the exclusion, while four lakh residents haven’t applied.

The MHA sanctioned around 1,000 tribunals to be set up in Assam in the wake of publication of the final NRC by July 31.

An official said, “Opportunity will also be given to those who haven’t filed claims by referring their cases to the Tribunals. Fresh summons will be issued to them to prove their citizenship.”

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