01/08/2019 - Indian Polity | Mainstorming

IAS Parliament 5 years

KEY POINTS

· The home ministry’s order to state governments to set up at least one detention centre in a city or district where an immigration check post is located, raises afresh questions about the government’s broader social agenda centred on citizenship.

· The order in the form of a “Model Detention Manual” comes ahead of the August 31 deadline for the controversial exercise in Assam to finalise its citizens’ register and raises the spectre of a nationwide national citizens’ register.

· Home ministry officials say the idea behind the order is to keep alleged illegal aliens readily at hand while their cases are being heard and make it easier for the state to deport them if necessary. But the move has dangers that attend any selective detention policy.

· Rampant human rights violations at such centres in Assam should raise red signals for state administrations. It places in the hands of the state security apparatus unwarranted powers over the citizenry.

· For sure, the government must not tolerate illegal immigration, but as the Assam exercise has demonstrated, incontrovertible proof of citizenship is a problematic exercise.

· The order also raises misgivings about communalism. The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill of 2016 had sought to offer a path to Indian citizenship for people from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh so long as they are not Muslim.

· Initiatives like this fuel divisiveness. In fact, this order stirs up suspicions that are belied by the government’s own data. Numbers collated from the 2011 census show that the immigration rate has fallen from 0.6 per cent to 0.4 per cent.