The Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) (IMDT) Act was an Act of the

Parliament of India The Parliament of India ( IAST: ) is the supreme legislative body of the Republic of India. It is a bicameral legislature composed of the president of India and two houses: the Rajya Sabha (Council of States) and the Lok Sabha (House of the ...

enacted in 1983 by the Indira Gandhi government. It was struck down by the Supreme Court of India in 2005 in ''Sarbananda Sonowal v. Union of India''. Known as the IMDT Act (1983) it described the procedures to detect illegal immigrants (from

Bangladesh Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...

) and expel them from

Assam Assam (; ) is a state in northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas along the Brahmaputra and Barak River valleys. Assam covers an area of . The state is bordered by Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh to the north; Nagaland and Manipur ...

. The Act was pushed through mainly on the grounds that it provided special protections against undue harassment to the “minorities” affected by the

Assam Agitation The Assam Movement (also Anti-Foreigners Agitation) (1979–1985) was a popular uprising in Assam, India, that demanded the Government of India to detect, disenfranchise and deport illegal aliens. Led by All Assam Students Union (AASU) and Al ...

. It was applicable to the state of Assam only whereas in other states, detection of foreigners is done under

The Foreigners Act, 1946 The Foreigners Act, 1946 is an Act of the Imperial Legislative Assembly enacted to grant the certain powers to the Interim Government of India in matters of foreigners in India. The Act was enacted before India became independent. Provisions T ...

. The act made it difficult to deport illegal immigrants from Assam.

Salient features

The Foreigners Act, 1946 defines a foreigner as a person who is not a citizen of India. Section 9 of the Act states that, where the nationality of a person is not evident as per preceding section 8, the onus of proving whether a person is a foreigner or not, shall lie upon such person. However, under the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal ) (IMDT) Act, the burden of proving the citizenship or otherwise rested on the accuser and the police, not the accused. This was a major departure from the provisions of the Foreigners Act, 1946. The accuser must reside within a 3 km radius of the accused, fill out a complaint form (a maximum of ten per accuser is allowed) and pay a fee of ten Rupees. If a suspected illegal migrant is thus successfully accused, he is required by the Act to simply produce a ration card to prove his Indian citizenship. And if a case made it past these requirements, a system of tribunals made up of retired judges would finally decide on deportation based on the facts. The act also provided that 'if the application is found frivolous or vexatious' the Central Government may not accept it. It excluded the migrants who entered India before March 25, 1971 from the illegal-migration accusation. And for post-1971 migrants too, the procedure for deporting were tough.

Supreme Court's views

The Act was challenged by

Sarbananda Sonowal Sarbananda Sonowal ( Assamese: সৰ্বানন্দ সোণোৱাল / IPA: xɔɹbanɔndɔ xʊnʊwal; born 31 October 1962) is an Indian politician from Assam who is the current Cabinet Minister of Ports, Shipping and Waterways and ...

in courts. In 2005 a three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court of India held that the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act, 1983 and rules "has created the biggest hurdle and is the main impediment or barrier in the identification and deportation of illegal migrants" and struck down the Act. The court also observed "(the conviction rate under the IMDT act) comes to less than half per cent of the cases initiated...(the IMDT Act) is coming to the advantage of such illegal migrants as any proceedings initiated against them almost entirely ends in their favour, enables them to have a document having official sanctity to the effect that they are not illegal migrants." On 9 August 2012, the Supreme Court hearing a

public interest litigation The chief instrument through which judicial activism has flourished in India is public interest litigation (PIL) or social action litigation (SAL). ''Public interest litigation'' (PIL) refers to litigation undertaken to secure public interest and de ...

petition seeking a direction for deportation of illegal migrants, was told that the Government of India, as a matter of policy, "does not support any kind of illegal migration either into its territory or illegal immigration of its citizens. "It was also stated that the Government is committed to deporting illegal Bangladeshi migrants, but only lawfully. It asserted that the demand for deleting the names of alleged 41 lakh doubtful voters from the list of 2006 on the basis of religious and linguistic profiling would prima facie be illegal, arbitrary and violative of the secular and democratic credentials of India. The court posted the matter for final hearing on 6 November 2012.

Salient features

Supreme Court's views

See also

References

Further reading