India Intensifies Expelling People Deemed Immigrants

Date: 10 June 2025 - 22:27

News ID: ۱۴۰۴۶۶

GUWAHATI, India (Reuters) --
India has started to push people it considers illegal immigrants into neighboring Bangladesh, but human rights activists say authorities are arbitrarily throwing people out of the country.
Since May, the northeastern Indian state of Assam has “pushed back” 303 people into Bangladesh out of 30,000 declared as foreigners by various tribunals over the years, a top official said this week.
Such people in Assam are typically long-term residents with families and land in the state, which is home to tens of thousands of families tracing their roots to Muslim-majority Bangladesh.
Activists say many of them and their families are often wrongly classified as foreigners in mainly Hindu India and are too poor to challenge tribunal judgments in higher courts.
Some activists, who did not want to be named for fear of reprisal, said only Muslims had been targeted in the expulsion drive.
Assam, which has a 260 km (160 mile) border with Bangladesh, started sending back people last month who had been declared as foreigners by its Foreigners Tribunals. Such a move is politically popular in Assam, where Bengali language speakers with possible roots in Bangladesh compete for jobs and resources with local Assamese speakers.
“There is pressure from the Supreme Court to act on the expulsion of foreigners,” Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma told the state assembly on Monday. “We have pushed back 303 people. These pushbacks will be intensified. We have to be more active and proactive to save the state.”
He was referring to the Supreme Court asking Assam in February why it had not moved on deporting declared foreigners.
Aman Wadud, an Assam-based lawyer who routinely fights citizenship cases and is now a member of the main opposition Congress party, said the government was “arbitrarily throwing people out of the country”.
“There is a lot of panic on the ground - more than ever before,” he said.
It is not only Assam that is acting against people deemed to be living illegally in the country.
Police in the western city of Ahmedabad said they have identified more than 250 people “confirmed to be Bangladeshi immigrants living illegally here”.
“The process to deport them is in progress,” said senior police officer Ajit Rajian.