Dispur: The Sonitpur district administration in Assam has ordered five persons, identified as residents of Dhobokata village, who were ‘declared foreigners’ by a tribunal in 2024, to leave India within 24 hours, maktoobmedia.com reported.
The expulsion order, signed by Deputy Commissioner Ananda Kumar Das, is the first known use of the Immigrants (Expulsion from Assam) Act, 1950 after state cabinet approved its implementation earlier this year.
The five individuals according to the report based on inputs by police are currently ‘absconding’ with local residents telling the outlet that the families have not seen since they left the place more than a decade ago.
The Sonitpur Foreigners Tribunal No. 2 declared four women and a man from two families ‘foreigners’ after years of pending the cases against them which the border police referred to the tribunal in 2006.
The order reportedly stated that their presence in the state ‘is detrimental to the interest of the general public and also for the internal security of the state’.
The orders, invoking the 1950 Act, directed to leave Indian territory ‘within 24 hours’ through the Dhubri/Sribhumi/South Salmara–Mankachar route connecting to Bangladesh.
The order warned that the administration would take ‘appropriate action’ to remove them in the event of them not complying with it.
‘They are absconding and their whereabouts are currently not known. We are searching for them, and once they are located, we will take appropriate action as per law,’ Sonitpur Senior Superintendent of Police Barun Purkayastha reportedly said.
Meanwhile villagers claimed that the families had migrated to Dhobokata from central Assam 20 years ago. However they left the place after being reported to border police.
Zakir Hussain, a resident of a neighbouring village told the outlet ‘They were viewed with suspicion, and there were issues. They left the village around that time itself’.
Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma ‘s cabinet cleared an SOP in September in order to implement the 1950 law empowering District Commissioners, rather than Foreigners Tribunals thus giving ‘suspected foreigners’ ten days to prove their Indian citizenship or face ‘evacuation orders’.
Himanta Biswa Sarma reportedly viewed this to be allowing the state government to ‘bypass the existing citizenship determination system’.