5. ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS: PROBLEM AND LONG TERM PERSPECTIVE
Illegal immigration has tasselled the social, political and economic scenario of the country and is one of the gruelling problem of the country. For social consequences, environmental degradation is always a concern. There was a huge decline of forest area in North-Eastern part for the purpose of settlement. As a matter of fact, in Assam the forest area has declined form 39% in 1951 to 30% in 2011. Besides this, there is also a jeopardy of identity and culture of the inborn North-Eastern people.
Moreover, it imperils the economic structure of the country by increasing financial burden. State government of the region has to increase its expenditure every year to spend for education and…show more content… POLITICAL AND JUDICIAL REVIEW
Agitation against immigrants can be observed widely in political and judicial parameters of the country. Politically, Assam and West Bengal are the two most affected states by immigrants. In Assam, All Assam Students Union started an agitation early in 1979. They demanded to stop the influx of immigrants from Bangladesh into India. They also demanded a stop on issuing aadhaar cards to students. An illegal immigrant can easily get the aadhaar card without any proper proof of identification by spending few bucks of money irrespective of the place he came from.
In West Bengal, according to some Indian newspapers, immigrants from Bangladesh have settled illegally in rural parts of the state. They don’t have proper proof of identity or the proof of address. And on the other side, the Government of Bangladesh refused the claims on illegal immigrants from their…show more content… One of them is the Illegal Immigrants (determination by tribunal) Act, 1983. The very purpose of the act was to detect illegal immigrants and to deport them through tribunals. It was praised for its protection of genuine asylum seekers against undue harassment by differentiating them from the illegal immigrants. Soon, it was alleged that due to rapid rise of Muslim population and demographic change in Assam, the act made it difficult to deport the immigrants from Assam. Accordingly, it was struck down by Supreme Court of India in 2005. Subsequently, the Assam Accord of 1985 came into picture. This Accord fixed the cut-off date to determine the immigrants in Assam as March 25, 1971, the day Bangladesh was born. According to this accord, people who had come to and settled in Assam on and before March 5, 1971, were given the status of citizens. While the ones who entered into Assam after the date shall be deported as per the law. This brought a militant struggle against the government to revoke the accord. They demanded to from a law which ousts all illegal immigrants irrespective of their time of