SC grants Interim Protection on petitioner’s being coercively declared as “Foreigner”

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Snehal Upadhyay-

The Supreme Court granted interim protection to the person coercively declared as “foreigner”, and gave rights to file for review. The person took reliance on the 2015 central government notification which spared migrants of specified communities from the provisions of the Foreigners Act, 1946.

Paragraph 3A of the Foreigners Order, 1948 was added on September 7, 2015, when several people belonging to minority communities of Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan faced religious persecution and were ordered to leave the country. These minorities namely, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians came to India for seeking shelter.

India grants citizenship only to those persecuted minorities who had entered India on or before 31st December 2014 with having proper documentation and those who do not have documents are exempted from the application of provisions of the Foreigners Act, 1946 and the orders made thereunder in respect of their stay in India.

The division bench comprising of Justices D. Y. Chandrachud and Hrishikesh Roy heard an SLP (Special Leave Petition) filed by Mangla Das

Mangla Das filed the SLP against the 2019 order passed by the Gauhati High Court by which the opinion of the Foreigners’ Tribunal declaring him a “foreigner” was confirmed.

“I am not a ‘foreigner’ at all for the purposes of the Act!” submitted the Advocate for the SLP Petitioner, based on the notification.

The petitioner’s counsel also brought the Court’s attention to the order passed on November 7, 2016, by the honourable Court by another division bench in the case of in Anima Sutradhar @ Anima Rani Sutradhar v. UOI where the matter of the same was the same.

In the above-mentioned case, the petitioner was declared “foreigner” by the tribunal and the High Court of Gauhati confirmed this, but the Supreme Court stayed the order passed by the High Court and granted liberty and freedom to the petitioner.

The division bench recorded this order and directed “The Special Leave Petition is accordingly disposed of granting liberty to the petitioner to apply for review. For a period of eight weeks from today, no coercive steps shall be taken against the petitioner in pursuance of the impugned order of the High Court so as to enable the petitioner to seek the remedy in review”.

Further, the bench added, “We clarify that we have made no observation in regard to the entitlement of the petitioner to claim under the Notification dated 7 September 2015”.

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