Assam is using a 75-year-old, partition-era law to empower bureaucrats, not judges, to decide who is an ‘illegal migrant’. Expulsions within 24 hours bypass even the flawed Foreigners Tribunal system, entrenching a regime of arbitrary, opaque and extra-judicial disenfranchisement, targeting Bengali Muslims in particular. It is a new model of mass disenfranchisement that may now spread nationwide.
