Guwahati, May 30 (UNI) Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Friday said that his government is pushing back only declared foreigners into Bangladesh following a Supreme Court order.

The Chief Minister's statement comes days after a video went viral where some people were seen on 'no man's land' between the India and Bangladesh border where one individual, Khairul Islam claimed that he is an Indian national who was being deported to Bangladesh. Islam is one among the nine persons who were recently arrested by the police in Assam's Morigaon district.

The Assam Chief Minister while addressing a press conference on Friday evening said that the pushing back was being done as per a Supreme court directive.

“The Supreme court has directed us that declared foreign nationals must be sent back. We have been asked to send back all the declared foreigners who did not appeal in the court," he said, adding that Assam police recently arrested 35 Bangladeshi nationals from near the Silchar and Meghalaya border and pushed them back.

He further said that the government has decided to speed up the process of detection of illegal foreigners.

"The process to detect foreigners was temporarily suspended in Assam due to the process of updation of the National Register of Citizens. However, during the recent conference of the Superintendent of Police in Dergaon, the government has decided to expedite the process. We are going to detect the foreigners and going to push them back after initiating talks with the Bangladesh government through the central government," said the chief minister.



"If an individual is declared as foreigner he should have approached the higher judiciary. If not then we are going to detect and deport them," he said, adding that Assam has 30,000 people who are declared as foreigners and they have "just disappeared".

"If we find them we will send them back to their country," he added.

As for the case of Khairul Islam, who had been a teacher in Morigaon, he was declared a foreigner by a Foreigners' Tribunal in 2016. Although he challenged the FT judgement and approached the High Court, the Gauhati High Court upheld the FT ruling in 2018, leading to his detention.

Islam's family members said that they have approached the Supreme Court over the high court's decision and the appeal was still pending

UNI AS RN