Pushing aliens out

Assam Chief Minister Dr. Himanta Biswa Sarma has announced that his government would  deport 10,000 to 50,000 infiltrators to Bangladesh annually in the next few years. He said this figure was on the basis of the fact that his BJP-led alliance government was able to push back around 2,000 infiltrators to Bangladesh in the past few months. Dr. Sarma has also pointed out that there are clear provisions in the Immigrants (Expulsion from Assam) Act, 1950, which empowers a district magistrate to expel an illegal migrant instantly after he or she is declared as a foreigner by a Foreigners’ Tribunal. Though the Chief Minister did not spell out in detail why this 75-year-old provision had not been made good use of by successive governments, it is very significant that the present government has chosen to invoke this act in order to push out illegal migrants of Bangladesh and East Pakistan origin once they are declared as foreigners. It is also important to note that since Bangladesh refuses to accept that there has been any infiltration from that country to India in general and Assam in particular, the government can easily push out such unwanted persons across the India-Bangladesh boundary to the land where they actually belong. The Chief Minister has also said that after invoking provisions of the Immigrants (Expulsion from Assam) Act, 1950, the necessity to keep the declared foreigners in detention camps for months and then go through the meandering course of approaching the Central government for deportation can now be done away with. According to Dr. Sarma, earlier, the Central Government had to contact the Bangladesh Government for verification of addresses of the declared foreigners, and deportation was possible only after getting the nod from Dhaka. Hundreds of such requests to Bangladesh, as the Chief Minister said, have been pending. Now that the government has chosen to make use of provisions of the Immigrants (Expulsion from Assam) Act, 1950, the time has come to utilize it to the fullest. It must always be kept in mind that India’s Northeast has been facing a serious demographic invasion, which has posed a grave threat to the integrity and sovereignty of the nation. The Supreme Court of India has time and again pointed this out and asked the government to protect its people from such a threat. The design for a demographic invasion particularly targeting Assam was originally drawn up by the Muslim League during the colonial period with the objective of including Assam in East Pakistan during Partition. Though that conspiracy failed despite pumping in several lakh Muslim peasants from erstwhile East Bengal, the successors of Jinnah, Ayub Khan, Bhutto, and Khaleda have continued to push in their people from Bangladesh, a population that multiplies faster than any other thing on earth. It is heartening that the Assam Chief Minister has taken a non-compromising stand on this issue.