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Detention centres

2018: Centre advises states on detention units

Dec 24, 2019 The Times of India

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s emphatic denial of “rumours” that Muslims in the country would be sent to detention centres in the wake of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) is being seen as a much-needed intervention to clear the air on a facility provided for under the law to lodge those who have been adjudged to be illegal aliens after a well-laid out legal process.

Detention centres — which state governments and Union Territories are empowered to set up on their own, with no involvement of the Centre — are merely meant to house illegal immigrants after they are declared ‘foreigners’ by tribunals/courts, or foreigners who have served their sentence for an offence in India and are awaiting deportation to their home country.

While addressing a rally on Sunday, the PM had said his government was not building detention centres for Muslims who are Indian citizens.

While the central government is vested with powers to detain and deport a foreign national staying illegally in the country under Sections 3(2)(e) and 3(2)(c) of the Foreigners Act, 1946, these powers have also been extended to to state governments and UT administrations under Articles 258(1) and 239(1) of the Constitution respectively.

To ensure that illegal immigrants do not ‘vanish’ after being declared by tribunals/ courts as ‘foreigners’, the central government has instructed states from time to time — in 2009, 2012, 2014 and 2018 — to hold them in ‘detention centres’ until deportation. As per information shared by the home ministry with LS on November 19, detention centres exist only in Assam and no other state/UT. There were 988 foreigners lodged in six detention centres across Assam as on November 22. TNN