Booker Prize winning Novelist Arundhati Roy along with Dunu Roy (left) and Prashant Bhushan at a meeting organised by the Citizen's Campaign for Preserving Democracy in New Delhi on Wednesday. — Photo: R. V. Moorthy

NEW DELHI: Speaking at a seminar organised by the Citizen's Campaign for Preserving Democracy (CCPD), activists, lawyers, and journalists expressed concern over the Supreme Court's recent ruling striking down the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) Act 1983 (IMDT Act).

Prashant Bhushan, Supreme Court advocate, said the court had struck down the Act despite hearing arguments on how the Delhi police misuse the Foreigners Act 1946, to harass people who are poor and who the police claim have migrated illegally. While, under the IMDT Act (that was made applicable only to Assam before the court struck it down), the onus of proving that a person is not a foreigner lies on the person or government making the claim, the Foreigners Act which is in force in the rest of the country, puts the onus of proving that such a person is not a foreigner on the person himself.

Criticising the Supreme Court judgment for basing its decision on Article 355 of the Constitution which makes it the duty of the Centre to protect States against external aggression and internal disturbance, Mr. Bhushan said that it was the first time he had seen this provision interpreted in this manner. He said the court had equated illegal migration by Bangladeshis to external aggression.

Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy, who released the Hindi version of `Democracy, Citizens and Migrants: Nationalism in the era of Globalisation,' a CCPD Report, said that the IMDT Act was one more law that made the poor illegal.

She said that at a time when the rich were being offered dual citizenship by the Government of India, the poor were not being allowed to live in the country.

The CCPD report has documented the round up, arrest, the supposed `hearings' and deportation of purported Bangladeshi migrants from Delhi. The report notes that the Central Government has not constituted a tribunal as required by the Foreigners Tribunal Order 1964, to determine the nationality of a person who is alleged to be an illegal migrant. Under this Order, the Central Government is required to constitute a tribunal to give its opinion after giving reasonable opportunity to the alleged illegal migrant to make a representation, and produce evidence.

The tribunal is supposed to pronounce its decision after considering such evidence.

The report has demanded the withdrawal of powers given to the Delhi police to detect and deport illegal Bangladeshi migrants from Delhi by the Action Plan formulated by the Home Ministry in May 2002, pursuant to a Delhi High Court order.

As per this plan, the Commissioner, Delhi police, is required to set up 10 task forces to identify illegal migrants, and each task force is assigned a quota of identifying 100 illegal migrants daily.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail