Sonowal gave the warning; time gave us the proof

Anita Verma

(anna.verma@gmail.com)

After Sarbananda Sonowal moved the Supreme Court against the IMDT Act, Assam was supposed to be safe. That was the assumption. The judgment was unequivocal, and the constitutional warning was unmistakable. Illegal immigration was not treated as a routine administrative lapse or a local law-and-order issue. It was identified as a threat to national security, capable of altering the demographic and political character of a border state. The Supreme Court laid bare a failure of governance and dismantled a statutory framework it found constitutionally untenable.

What made Sonowal extraordinary was the Court's rare invocation of Article 355. Illegal immigration was characterized as a failure of both the State and the Union to discharge their constitutional obligation to protect Assam from external aggression and internal disturbance. Courts seldom cross this threshold. When they do, it signals not a disagreement over policy, but a constitutional breakdown. The IM(DT) Act was struck down precisely because it inverted the burden of proof, made detection virtually impossible, and institutionalized delay in a matter where delay itself was destructive.

On paper, Assam should have turned a corner. Nearly two decades later, the unavoidable question remains: if Sonowal resolved the crisis, why does Assam feel more vulnerable than ever?

The answer lies in the illusion of closure that followed. We were told the crisis had been addressed. That striking down the IM(DT) Act would restore constitutional balance. That detection and deportation would finally align with legal intent. Judgments changed. Reality did not. Riverine belts continued to transform, new settlements appeared on ecologically fragile land, and indigenous communities contracted into narrower spaces. Demographic change continued steadily and visibly. What shifted was not the crisis, but the comfort of believing it had been handled.

Assam's undocumented influx did not erupt overnight. It matured slowly, predictably, and in plain sight. Anyone who moved through chars, forest fringes, or border districts over three decades witnessed the transformation as it unfolded. Yet governance responded with delay rather than decisiveness, with caution rather than resolve. The crisis endured not because it was uncontrollable, but because it was tolerated.

The Assam Accord was meant to bring certainty. It promised a cut-off date, detection mechanisms, and protection of Assam's demographic identity. It did not fail on its own. Verification remained sporadic, border management weak, tribunal capacity inadequate, and political resolve inconsistent. Over time, the Accord became symbolic... frequently invoked, rarely enforced. Its language survived; its machinery faltered. What was meant to close a chapter instead prolonged uncertainty.

If Sonowal exposed constitutional failure, the next phase revealed something subtler: administrative drift cloaked in legality. This became evident with Rahim Ali. The Supreme Court held... correctly and constitutionally, that mere suspicion cannot justify a reference to a Foreigners' Tribunal. The state must possess foundational factual material before branding a person a foreigner. The judgment reinforced due process and protected individuals from arbitrary initiation of proceedings.

But in practice, Rahim Ali began to be invoked far beyond its factual context. References were challenged wholesale, even where police verification, inquiry reports, and linkage documents existed. Due process, intended as a safeguard, started functioning as a threshold barrier. The danger lay not in the judgment itself, but in its mechanical extension, which led to the process displacing adjudication altogether.

That imbalance was decisively corrected in Iman Ali v. Union of India (WP(C) No. 3939/2020), decided by Justice Sanjay Kumar Medhi of the Gauhati High Court. The Court drew a clear constitutional line. It held that Rahim Ali arose from a factual vacuum and could not be mechanically applied where preliminary inquiry and supporting material existed. Citizenship determination, the Court emphasized, requires holistic appreciation of evidence, not selective procedural dissection.

Justice Medhi reaffirmed that the statutory burden under the Foreigners Act remains intact unless foundational facts are demonstrably absent. Courts cannot convert procedural safeguards into instruments that paralyze enforcement. This was not a dilution of rights. It was a restoration of legal balance, an acknowledgment that due process is meant to regulate adjudication, not replace it.

What followed, however, was not closure but continued drift. The center of the crisis shifted once again. Today, Assam's predicament is debated less at the border and more inside courtrooms. What was once an issue of detection and verification is now mediated through procedural scrutiny. Litigation has grown slower and more layered. References are challenged at inception, inquiry reports examined line by line, and tribunal orders dissected through prolonged appellate review.

Each step is legally defensible. Together, they have produced a system that rarely concludes.

Outside the courtroom, nothing pauses. Land pressure continues to intensify across riverine belts and ecologically fragile zones. Forest fringes absorb settlements faster than regulation can respond. Environmental stress deepens, while demographic anxiety becomes a lived reality. Indigenous communities bear the cost of delay, even as the legal process moves forward without temporal urgency.

Courts are designed to refine law, not reverse demographic transformation. Judicial intervention can correct excesses and ensure fairness. It cannot substitute sustained execution where hesitation has already altered ground realities. The longer the resolution is deferred, the further the crisis moves beyond the reach of adjudication alone.

Judicial clarity existed. Statutory frameworks were available. Constitutional warnings were explicit. What did not follow was decisive closure. Governance increasingly relied on declaration... committees without conclusion, announcements without execution, and policies without persistence. Paper advanced. Reality did not.

This is the unresolved core of Assam's crisis...  not the absence of law, but the failure to carry law to its logical end. Sonowal exposed constitutional neglect. Rahim Ali revealed institutional fragility. Iman Ali reminded us that law cannot endlessly compensate for political hesitation. Time, meanwhile, supplied its own evidence.

The warning was clear.

The framework was available.

The proof now lies on the ground.

Sonowal gave the warning.

Time gave us the proof.