New Delhi, July 12
The Supreme Court today struck down the Illegal Migrant (Determination by Tribunal) Act applicable to Assam for identification and deportation of unauthorised Bangladeshis, which was fraught with serious political overtones for the state, specially ahead of the coming Assembly elections next year.
Holding the 1983 Act as unconstitutional, a three-judge Bench of Chief Justice R.C. Lahoti, Mr Justice G.P. Mathur and Mr Justice P.K. Balasubramanyan said apart from the legislation, the rules framed thereunder to implement the law were also “ultra vires”.
The Act provided for determining of the identification of illegal migrants from Bangladesh in Assam by special tribunals set up under the legislation, which had become a bone of contention between the ruling Congress which supported the controversial law and Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), BJP and All Assam Students Union (ASSU) opposing it.
The court ordered that all the tribunals set up under the Act, “shall cease to function immediately” and the pending matters regarding the determination of the identity of illegal Bangladeshi migrants stood transferred to the normal tribunals constituted under the Foreigners Act as existed all over the country.
The court further directed the Assam Government to set up sufficient number of tribunals under the Foreigners Act to deal with the determination and deportation of Bangladeshis living in the state illegally.
The order came on a bunch of petitions against and in favour of the Act with the main petition challenging its constitution validity, filed in 2000 by former ASSU leader Sarbananda Sonowal, now AGP MP in the Lok Sabha in a pending PIL initially filed by the All India Lawyers Forum for Civil Liberties (AILFCL), seeking identification of illegal Bangladeshi migrants throughout the country .
The court agreed with Sonowal’s counsel, former Attoreney-General Ashok Desai, who argued against the Act at length, that the IMDT passed by Parliament on October 15, 1983, had created a parallel mechanism for determination of illegal migrants in Assam when a law like Foreigners Act, applicable for the entire country already existed since 1948.
The difference between the ruling Congress and Opposition parties over the Act was evident from four affidavits filed in the apex court in the course of the proceedings during past five years by the NDA and the UPA governments, taking entirely different stands on the issue.
While the BJP-led NDA had expressed reservation about the utility of the Act, the UPA government had said it wanted to retain the law in Assam but was not in favour of its extension to other states where Bangladeshis were staying in large numbers.
