Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi whose term will soon end has expressed confidence that he would be the Chief Minister of his state for the fourth consecutive term. Notwithstanding his guarded acceptance that the first phase of elections on April 4, in Upper Assam and Barak Valley could have gone the way of his opponents, Gogoi is ready to suspend logic and reason and to pronounce that the second phase of the elections on April 11 covering mainly Lower Assam will go the Congress way. Gogoi must have attributed this turnaround to the large concentration of voters of a particular community in Lower Assam who feel insecure by the BJP and Sangh Parivar’s belligerence and their call to take on illegal immigrants. Indeed, this issue has become the crux of the Assam elections. Many ‘indigenous’ Assamese liken this election to the Battle of Saraighat where Lachit Borphukan the legendary Assamese warrior defeated the Moghul army in 1671.
Undoubtedly the Congress Party has benefitted from the vote banks comprising people of doubtful identity. Hence its reluctance to speed up the issue of upgradation of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) following the Supreme Court directive after the IMDT Act, (where onus for identifying a genuine Indian citizen was placed on a complainant) was struck down in 2005 following a petition by Sarbabanda Sonowal the most prominent face of the BJP in Assam and it’s chief ministerial candidate should the BJP+ form the next government in Assam.
The IMDT was a major departure from the provisions of the Foreigners Act, 1946. It says 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 was 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 them were tough.
Any Government in Assam that is serious about deporting illegal immigrants would have found the Supreme Court order of 2005 a good handle to tackle the illegal immigration problem but not the Congress Government which has dilly-dallied with the issue. No wonder those who have come to Assam via illegal means find the Congress Party a solid anchor and Gogoi is confident that they will tilt the votes in his favour.
