Indian SC seeks info on inflow of undocumented immigrants after Bangladesh’s liberation

The Indian Supreme Court on Thursday directed the Union government to provide information on the inflow of undocumented immigrants into India after Bangladesh's formation in 1971 and the action taken to deal with this problem including by the states bordering the eastern neighbour.

It said undocumented immigration raised a "critical issue" independent of the validity of the Citizenship Act's Section 6A and that it is not limited to Assam but concerned the entire country as it created pressure on resources.

"While arguments raising a constitutional challenge to Section 6A form the core of the controversy...At this stage, it will be necessary for the court to have data-based disclosure...," a Chief Justice of India Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud-led five-judge bench said in an interim order.

The bench was hearing petitions challenging the constitutional validity of Section 6A, which was introduced in 1985 to provide citizenship to people from erstwhile East Pakistan (Bangladesh), who entered and settled in Assam between January 1, 1966, and March 25, 1971. These people had to be declared as foreigners to be registered for citizenship.

The bench, also comprising justices Surya Kant, MM Sundresh, JB Pardiwala, and Manoj Misra, sought specific data on those detected as foreigners between January 1966 and March 25, 1971, as well as those given citizenship.

It sought data on the number of foreign tribunals, cases disposed of and pending before them, average time for disposal of cases, and appeals pending before the Gauhati high court.

The court sought information from the Union government and northeastern states, including Assam, on steps taken at the administrative level to deal with illegal immigration. It asked for an affidavit before Monday as well as data on the extent of border fencing and estimated timelines to complete it.

Solicitor-general Tushar Mehta, who appeared for the government, agreed to submit the data while defending Section 6A's constitutional validity. Mehta said the ground reality the petitioners have pointed to raised a "real serious issue". He added the government was trying its best to contain illegal infiltration from the porous border.

The court earlier observed the government was not denying the gravity of the problem. "We want to know what the government of India is doing. It [undocumented immigration] is not just changing the demography of Assam but creates pressure on resources," the court said. "Post March 25, 1971, the government must be very serious about what is happening..."

A process in Assam to detect undocumented immigrants led to the exclusion of around two million people from a National Register of Indian Citizens (NRC) in 2018. The Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) was passed a year later to fast-track the citizenship process for non-Muslims, who have entered India from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh before December 31, 2014.

The passage triggered protests with the opponents of the law insisting it was discriminatory and unconstitutional as it left out the Muslims and linked faith to citizenship in a secular country.

The government has granted repeated extensions for framing rules for the CAA. Eligible people can submit applications for Indian citizenship under it once the rules are notified.