Gauhati High Court news: The Gauhati High Court recently expressed displeasure over the manner in which the foreigners tribunals maintained its records, observing that it took one and a half hours for the court to find discrepancies while hearing a case in which a person had been declared a foreigner post March 1971.

Justices Kalyan Rai Surana and Susmita Phukan Khaund were on February 10 hearing a plea filed by one Shirajul Hoque, who challenged the opinion of the Foreigners Tribunal which declared him a “foreigner”.

“The exercise to find out the discrepancies in the marking of exhibits has consumed almost one and a half hours of the court’s time,” the bench observed.

The Gauhati High Court, while examining the opinion and order of the Foreigners Tribunal, raised two important questions before the Assam government:

These tribunals are the authorities that identify illegal immigrants and are quasi-judicial bodies meant to “furnish opinion on the question as to whether a person is or is not a foreigner within the meaning of the Foreigners Act, 1946”.

Such tribunals usually get two kinds of cases:

In such cases, the accused has to prove that he or she is an Indian.

The apex court, at times, has also looked into the matters and questioned the status of individuals deemed foreigners and placed in detention camps of different states.