Explained: The 1950 Act That Lets Assam Expel Foreigners Directly

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Saturday said the state was actively considering using a long-forgotten law from 1950 to directly expel illegal migrants without going through the courts.

The law in question, the Immigrants (Expulsion from Assam) Act, 1950, empowers even a district commissioner to issue an order for the immediate removal of a person identified as an illegal immigrant.

What Is The Immigrants (Expulsion from Assam) Act, 1950?

The Immigrants (Expulsion from Assam) Act, 1950, was enacted by the Parliament in the early years of independence to address a pressing crisis in Assam. During the years after the Partition in 1947, Assam witnessed a massive influx of immigrants from East Bengal, which later became East Pakistan and then Bangladesh. The migration was largely driven by communal violence, displacement and the open border.

To tackle this issue, the IEAA was passed on 1 March 1950. It gave the Central Government the power to remove any person or group from Assam if their presence harmed public interest or affected the rights of Scheduled Tribes. The law also allowed the government to give these powers to local officers, such as district commissioners, so they could issue expulsion orders directly, without going through the courts.

The law was applicable across India but tailored to Assam.

Over time, the law was mostly ignored. When the Assam Movement started in 1979, led by the All Assam Students' Union (AASU), people again raised strong concerns about illegal migration. This led to the Assam Accord in 1985, which decided that anyone who came into Assam after March 24, 1971, would be treated as a foreigner.

This Act predates several key legislations that are currently used to deal with immigration issues in India, such as the Foreigners Act, 1946; Section 6A of the Citizenship Act; the Foreigners (Tribunals) Order, 1964; the Passport (Entry into India) Act, 1920; and the Passport Act, 1967.

In October 2024, the Supreme Court of India upheld Section 6A of the Citizenship Act and clearly said that the 1950 Act was still valid. A Constitution Bench of five judges pointed out that the law allowed even a district commissioner to order the removal of illegal immigrants. The court said this Act can work alongside the Citizenship Act and the Foreigners Act to detect and deport illegal migrants.

What Himanta Sarma Said

"For whatever reason, our lawyers had not informed us about [the law], and we weren't aware of it either," Mr Sarma said, as reported by The Times Of India. Now that this has come to attention, the government is seriously discussing it, he said.

He added that the state had already begun preparations over the last few days to act on this provision. "This time, if someone is identified as a foreigner, we will not send them to a tribunal. We will straightaway push them back."

He clarified that those who have already moved court will not be affected by this.

Himanta Sarma said that the process of identifying foreigners, which had slowed down due to complications around the National Register of Citizens (NRC), will now be sped up by using the legal powers available under this old but still valid Act.