The Gauhati High Court has directed the State government to set up Electronic Foreigners’ Tribunals (e-FT) within the next three months in three districts of Assam. These e-FTs are to be set up on a pilot basis. The court has also directed the Assam government to prepare a common database of “illegal foreigners” residing in the State.
The project is to be extended to other districts of Assam subsequently. The State government is to complete the entire project within a year.
The report in the Sentinel says that, the Electronic-FT is expected provide a single platform for all the data collected by the various Foreigners’ Tribunals across the state. The government is to have sole access to the data. The stakeholders shall have access to the data of e-FT’s, the report says.
The stakeholders include Central government and its bodies including MHA (Ministry of Home Affairs) and the MEA (Ministry of External Affairs), the others include the State’s Home & Political department, Election Commission, the Border branch of Assam Police, the Foreigners’ Tribunals (FT) as and the detention centres.
“Work of creating and compiling the database of e-FT’s has been issued to IT firms”, a report in the news website The Sentinel reads.
The Sentinel in its report also claims that the Border branch of Police is monitoring the entire process of setting up of e-FT’s
Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has sanctioned an amount of Rs.99 crore for this project.
The e-FT will also be the single repository of all cases related to ‘illegal immigrants’ and ‘foreigners’ that are still pending in the Foreigners’ Tribunals.
The report adds that the details would include complete information of the cases, all information about the accused, the minutes details such as in which FT case is registered, current status of case, detention centre occupancy etc.
The e-FT will also include the data of the ones who have been declared ‘foreigners’ as well as the ‘Doubtful Voters’ including up-to-date legacy data and biometrics of the persons.
Currently there are about 100 Foreigners’ Tribunal and six detention centres for ‘foreigners’ in Assam.