New Delhi: The Assam government began shifting detainees to the Matia Transit Camp – the country's largest detention centre to hold "illegal foreigners" – with the first batch of 68 persons transferred there on Friday.

According to reports, 68 “foreigners” were moved to the “detention centre”, which will officially be known as a ‘transit camp’, located in Goalpara – about 130 km west of Guwahati. There are 45 men, 21 women and two children among the detainees, who have been "declared foreigners" by the quasi-judicial Foreigner Tribunals and those convicted by judicial courts of visa violations.

While people who have been convicted of visa violations can be deported to their host nations, persons who are "declared foreigners" can appeal the decision of Foreigner Tribunals and could be kept in detention indefinitely.

The Matia transit camp is built on 2.5 hectares of land and can house 3,000 people and was built as per the Union government's guidelines. Soon, all "foreigners" held in six detention camps across the state will be moved to Matia. At the moment, there are six detention centres within jails – in Kokrajhar and Goalpara district jails and Tezpur, Silchar, Dibrugarh and Jorhat central jails.

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According to the Indian Express, the state government said in September 2022 that 195 detainees were held in the six detention camps.

The newspaper also reported that rights activists in Assam have opposed the government’s move to shift "declared foreigners" to the transit camp as it is meant only for “convicted foreigners”.

The Supreme Court judgment in a landmark 2019 decision said that "declared foreigners" who have spent more than three years in detention centres can be granted bail. Further, the Gauhati high court at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic relaxed the condition to two years. Subsequently, hundreds of "declared foreigners" were granted bail. According to Deccan Herald, more than 1,000 "declared foreigners" were lodged in the "detention camps" but around 200 remain now.

People are declared foreigners in Assam if they fail to prove that they or their forefathers lived in India on or before March 24, 1971, the cut-off in the Assam Accord of 1985. The same accord also mandated the detection of "foreigners" who crossed into Assam later and expel them. However, the passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act by the Narendra Modi government in 2019 complicates the agreement, as non-Muslims who fled "religious persecution" in Bangladesh can be granted citizenship under the law – provided they had entered the country before December 31, 2014.

The Supreme Court said earlier this month that it will re-examine Section 6A of the Citizenship Act – which deals with the cut-off date for citizenship agreed upon under the Assam Accord.

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