Supreme Court’s Rebuke

The Supreme Court has thrown out the affidavit by the Assam government, about the steps it has taken to check the influx of illegal Bangladeshi tiols into the State. The stern rebuke by the apex court brings home the sheer temerity of Dispur, its perversity in behaving like an examinee doggedly using unfair means and lying about it, but getting caught in the act again and again. The Supreme Court has castigated the Assam government for dragging its feet ‘for years and years’ on deporting illegal migrants. Expressing its displeasure with the ‘vague’ affidavit prepared by some ‘junior officer who has no exposure to ground reality’, the Supreme Court asked: “Shall we call this man and ask what is there in the affidavit?” This is the manner in which Dispur deigns to answer questions posed on December 17 last year by the apex court of the land — how the Assam government is checking infiltration, how it is detecting and deporting illegal migrants, how it is going about updating the tiol Register of Citizens (NRC). And let us not forget that it is the Supreme Court that has fixed the January 2016 deadline for updating the NRC to a highly unwilling Dispur. The truth is that the present State government cannot think of behaving with the Supreme Court in any way otherwise, for it has to safeguard its votebank which guarantees its existence. This is why there are now orchestrated attempts to muffle words like ‘foreigners’, ‘illegal migrants’ and ‘doubtful voters’, as well as loudly question the very legitimacy of Foreigners Tribuls and Court judgments in the Assembly.