The cut-off year

Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Saturday made a very significant statement regarding the cut-off year for the detection or identification of illegal migrants from erstwhile East Pakistan and present-day Bangladesh. The Chief Minister has stated that the BJP stood for 1951 as the cut-off year despite the State government continuing to stand by the original stand of 1971 as was agreed by the AASU, the Centre and the State government in 1985. It is strange that the country currently has two cut-off years for the same illegal migrants. This newspaper has been from the very beginning pointing out that a civilized nation cannot have two cut-off years for illegal migrants. One must recall that when the AASU-led movement for detection and deportation of Bangladeshi infiltrators began in 1979, there was no question of a separate cut-off year for Assam against the one for the rest of India. It was only in 1983 that Indira Gandhi had got Parliament to pass the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act, which made 1971 as the cut-off year. Subsequently, the Congress regime had also forced this cut-off year upon the AASU leaders when the Assam Accord was signed, following which the blame for making 1971 the cut-off year was passed on to the AASU. Moreover, when the IMDT Act was passed, one of the premises for making 1971 the cut-off year was the reference to the India–Bangladesh Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Peace – popularly referred to as the Indira-Mujib Pact. But in 2006, when the Supreme Court of India had struck down the IMDT Act while disposing of a writ petition filed by Sarbananda Sonowal, the case for retaining 1971 as the cut-off year had definitely become considerably weak. Without going into the details of the Supreme Court's historic order striking down the IMDT Act, it can be mentioned that the apex court had not only described illegal migration to India from across the borders of the sensitive Eastern and North- Eastern regions of the country as "a threat to the integrity and security of the region", but had also equated infiltration to "external aggression." The exact words which the Supreme Court had used are – "This being the situation there can be no manner of doubt that the State of Assam is facing 'external aggression and internal disturbance' on account of large scale illegal migration of Bangladeshi nationals. It, therefore, becomes the duty of the Union of India to take all measures for protection of the State of Assam from such external aggression and internal disturbance as enjoined in Article 355 of the Constitution." Given this observation of the apex court there can be no justification whatsoever that one section of the same set of illegal migrants does not pose any threat to the integrity and security of the region. This justifies that there should be one – and only one – cut-off year for the entire nation, come what may.