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Previously, I have written about the multiple procedural irregularities that have characterised the Supreme Court’s NRC Case: the use of sealed covers, consequential decisions being taken in closed-door hearings, and the bench’s disturbing disregard for due process rights.
In the course of this years-long proceeding, the Court has far exceeded its brief as the apex judicial organ of the country, with its repeated stress on deportations making it appear more executive-minded even than the executive: more the Supreme Deportation Authority rather than the sentinel on the qui vive.
According to accounts of the oral proceedings, the government of Assam brought forward a plan to secure the monitored release of foreigners who had been in detention centres more than five years. The plan entailed the detainees paying a hefty deposit amount of Rs 5 lakhs, having their biometric details taken, and then set free from the detention centres.
The Chief Justice-led bench reacted to this with great anger, questioning the government repeatedly about its failure to deport individuals who had been held to be foreigners (this has been a common theme of every hearing).
The Chief Justice claimed that the government was asking the bench to be “a part of an illegal order where a foreigner who has no right to stay in the country will remain and sign a bond and so on.”
He further lectured the government about what it should have been arguing, noting that
When the amicus curae made the rather basic point that technically, deportation could hardly be carried out without the cooperation of the host country, the Chief Justice’s only response was “we can say that the government has failed to do its job.” The Chief Secretary then promised to come up with “better measures.”
There are a few things worth noting here. To start with, Harsh Mander v Union of India is a PIL about inhumane conditions in detention centres. How it has become a case about deportations is anyone’s guess.
And there is a particularly cruel irony in the fact that a case filed to draw attention to inhumane conditions in detention centres has now brought us to a pass where the Court nixes the government attempts to release a small class of detainees from those centres.
But leave that aside for the moment. The Chief Justice’s repeated enquiries about deportation suggest not only an ignorance of the basic international law principles of non-refoulement and against statelessness, but also either ignorance – or contempt – of the principle of separation of powers.
Section 3 of the Foreigners Act is pellucidly clear: the entry, departure, or presence of foreigners in India is a matter for the central government. It is not for the Court to browbeat the government into taking a stand on whether or not to deport (notwithstanding some observations in Sarbananda Sonowal, which are not only obiter, but completely unsupported by any legal principle of authority).
Matters are worse confounded by the fact that when a Foreigners Tribunal makes a decision on the status of an individual, its decision is limited to deciding whether or not the said individual is an Indian national. The Foreigners Tribunal does not – and cannot – return a finding on whether that individual is a national of a named other country.
The Chief Justice’s reaction – “why don’t you deport?” – therefore flies in the face of reality as well, because there will be – and there are – many situations where a Foreigners Tribunal declares an individual as a foreigner, but there is no country to deport that individual to, because no country is claiming them as their national.
This is damaging in many respects, but it is particularly damaging because the task of checking whether the government is exercising its discretion to deport in consonance with principles of customary international law is a judicial task.
However, when the Court itself is acting in this fashion, to which forum are people supposed to appeal, if they think that the government is acting illegally?
This is why the separation of powers exists: for courts to review the actions of the government, and ensure the government acts legally. And this is why the blurring of the line between the court and the political executive – of which the entire NRC case is an exemplar – is so profoundly dangerous.
But let us come to an even more serious issue.
As indicated above, the government set out a plan where detainees who had spent more than five years in detention centres were to be conditionally released. The conditions of release are so onerous that in my view, they rise to the level of being unconstitutional, but let us ignore that for the moment.
The Court refused to accept this proposal as, in the opinion of the CJI, it amounted to sanctioning an “illegality”. Why? Because the government should have been deporting them.
It is at this stage that it becomes necessary to revisit the text of Article 21 of the Constitution – a provision that has come to mean everything to everyone in recent years, but which seems to mean nothing when it actually matters. Article 21 of the Indian Constitution states as follows:
There is no – no – law that authorises indefinite detention of an individual, whether citizen or foreigner. And if there was a law that did so, it would almost certainly be struck down as unconstitutional. On what basis, therefore, does the Court say that releasing detainees who have spent more than five years in detention would be endorsing an illegality?
The boot of illegality, rather, is on the other foot: by refusing release, it is the Court that is sanctioning a flagrant and continuing violation of Article 21, the provision that is supposed to be the heart and soul of the Constitution. And one can hardly ignore (once again) the almost brutal irony at the heart of this: it is the government that wants to release detainees from detention centres, and the court that wants to stop it.
Like every other legal culture, we too have our “never again” moment. For us, that “never again” moment is the notorious judgment in ADM Jabalpur, the Habeas Corpus case.
But when the Supreme Court prevents the government from (conditionally) releasing detainees who have been in detention centres (which, by all account, are inhumane places) for more than five years, thus condemning them to a continuing, lawless deprivation of personal liberty, then it is perhaps time to ask whether all we can do is keep saying “never again”, even as it happens all over again.
(This article was originally published on the Indian Constitutional Law and Philosophy blog, and has been republished by arrangement.)
(Gautam Bhatia is an advocate in the Supreme Court. He can be reached at @gautambhatia1988. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
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