Supreme Court to go into validity of IMDT Act

NEW DELHI, February 26: The Supreme Court today decided to go into the validity of the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act, 1983 after the Centre accepted the Act as discriminatory as it applied only to the State of Assam but refused to repeal it in the absence of a political consensus. Earlier, the court had given sufficient opportunity to the Centre to repeal the Act. But today solicitor general Harish Salve told the court about the predicament of the Centre in repealing the Act in the absence of political consensus and urged it to hear the matter and decide about the validity of the Act. Three politicians - one by Lawyers Forum for Civil Liberties president OP Saxena, the other by All Assam Students Union adviser Sarbananda Sonowal and the third by Jamait-ulema-Hind - had been filed in the court in this connection. While the first petition sought identification and deportation of about two crore illegal Bangladeshi migrants living in various parts of the country, the second petition urged for a declaration by the court that the Act was discriminatory since it was applicable only to Assam. The third petition sought a direction to make the Act applicable to the whole of the country besides being effectively implemented. A three-judge bench comprising Chief Justice AS Anand, Justice RC Lahoti and Justice Brijesh Kumar, which had earlier asked the Centre to repeal the Act in view of its own admission that it was discriminatory, reluctantly agreed to go into its validity in view of a request to this effect from all the parties. The court granted six weeks time to all the parties to complete their pleadings. Thereafter, they were asked to submit their written arguments within two weeks not exceeding more than five pages. The court further directed listing of the matters after eight weeks for fixing the schedule of the hearing. The court also permitted the Assam Pradesh Congress Committee to file its response to the petition as well as written arguments as an intervenor. But before all that, the Chief Justice came down heavily on the Centre for its failure to take effective steps to redress the grievances of the petitioners.