‘We Push Them in the Dark’: Assam CM’s Statements and Their Implications

By Asad Ashraf

May 4, 2026

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s appearance on ABP News on April 15 may have triggered a minor diplomatic row, with Bangladesh formally objecting to offensive remarks and summoning India’s acting High Commissioner, but his answers in the interview point to a much more troubling set of issues.

What Sarma Actually Said

Sarma arrived at the interview, in Hindi, with statistics, legal references and a notable degree of political candour. His main argument was a distinction he has drawn repeatedly, separating “Miya Muslims” from “indigenous Muslims.” In his language, Miya Muslims are those who came from Bangladesh, while indigenous Muslims are native to Assam. He stated assertively that the former group holds no political value for him.

“Miya,” or “Mian,” is a term of respect commonly used in South Asia for Muslim men. In Assam, it has been repurposed as a derogatory label for Bengali-origin Muslims, many of whom have resided in the state for generations. The conflation of a cultural identity with illegal immigration is widely seen as a politically calculated move designed to portray an entire community as permanent outsiders.

On deportations of those deemed “illegal migrants,” Sarma acknowledged that official numbers remain low, at roughly 1,400 people formally returned in the past year following a Supreme Court directive. He also explained why official deportations are infrequent. The standard procedure requires coordination between India’s Ministry of External Affairs and Bangladesh, which frequently refuses to recognise these individuals as its nationals, effectively blocking the process.

The most remarkable portion of the interview is Sarma’s account of an informal method running alongside official channels. He claimed that authorities use nighttime hours in areas where border forces are absent to push people across without any formal procedure, presenting this as a deliberate and ongoing policy rather than an occasional exception.

The Court Order Sarma Invokes

Sarma has repeatedly justified this approach by invoking a colonial-era statute, the Immigrants (Expulsion from Assam) Act of 1950, which allows a district commissioner to order expulsion administratively without going through a Foreigners Tribunal. In October 2024, the Supreme Court upheld Section 6A of the Citizenship Act, in which Justice Surya Kant directed that the 1950 Act shall be read into Section 6A for the purpose of identifying illegal immigrants. Sarma argues that this reactivates the 1950 Act and gives district commissioners fresh court-backed authority to expel people on prima facie suspicion alone.

Legal experts say this is a misreading. Under the Foreigners (Tribunals) Order of 1964, Foreigners Tribunals are the quasi-judicial bodies with the exclusive authority to declare a person a foreigner, and the Court’s directive was about using the 1950 Act to initiate that tribunal process, not to bypass it entirely. The ruling addressed citizenship rights under Section 6A, which covers migrants who arrived in Assam before March 1971, and it did not authorise deportations carried out outside any legal framework.

Courts have intervened multiple times to halt or reverse deportations that lacked proper procedures, with some individuals returned after their Indian citizenship was subsequently confirmed.

The legal foundation Sarma relies on is, at best, being stretched far beyond its intended scope.

The NRC Numbers

In the interview, Sarma also made claims regarding the National Register of Citizens (NRC), stating that 1.7 million individuals were declared illegal immigrants at a preliminary stage, of whom 600,000 are Hindus eligible for citizenship under existing law, leaving 1.1 million Muslims as undocumented immigrants. He added that this list has not been published.

However, the NRC’s final list, published in August 2019, excluded over 1.9 million people from multiple communities, including Bengali Hindus, Bengali Muslims and others. Sarma’s figures are inconsistent with those overall exclusion numbers. Importantly, exclusion from the NRC does not automatically make someone an illegal immigrant. Those excluded retain the right to challenge that determination before Foreigners’ Tribunals.

The Legal Framework Being Bypassed

India’s system for addressing illegal immigration is built around the Foreigners Act of 1946 and a network of Foreigners’ Tribunals, as mentioned above, designed to determine citizenship status through a quasi-judicial process. This system was created specifically to prevent arbitrary state action.

What appears to be happening in Assam ignores this structure entirely. Administrative judgment is replacing legal determination, and decisions are being made without any formal process in some cases.

It is true that India has not signed the 1951 Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol, meaning it carries no formal treaty obligations regarding refugees or asylum seekers. But the principle of non-refoulement, which prohibits returning anyone to a place where they could face persecution, torture or serious harm, is widely recognised as a norm of customary international law that applies to all states regardless of treaty status. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has consistently maintained this position.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which India is a signatory, guarantees that no one shall be arbitrarily expelled from a country without a proper opportunity to present their case. Pushbacks conducted at night, without hearings, legal representation or formal status determinations, violate this obligation directly. The Convention Against Torture, which India has signed but not ratified, also prohibits transferring anyone to a country where there are reasonable grounds to believe they would face torture or cruel treatment.

On the domestic front, the Supreme Court has affirmed on multiple occasions that constitutional protections, including the right to life and equality under Articles 14 and 21, extend to non-citizens on Indian soil.

The Problem of Identification

The most alarming moment in the interview is Sarma’s explanation of how officials determine whether someone is Bangladeshi. He said that people in Assam can simply tell who is not a legal migrant, as if that knowledge carried the same weight as a court finding. There are already documented cases of Indian citizens being wrongly pushed across the border, with some only returned after their citizenship was later verified.

A former Guwahati High Court judge once cautioned that Assam must not become a state where the executive oversteps the judiciary. That warning carries significant weight today.

The Bigger Picture

Sarma appears to frame the entire issue as a civilisational struggle to protect Hindus from demographic change. However, Assam’s demographic evolution is the product of centuries of history, trade, migration and colonial-era decisions. Reducing that history to a simple divide between legitimate insiders and encroaching outsiders ignores significant complexity. Demographic change, where it genuinely exists, is a different matter from illegal immigration, and treating the two as equivalent distorts both the facts and the policies built around them.

Sarma’s statements appear to raise the question of whether legal processes can be set aside for political advantage. From any legal standpoint, the answer is unambiguous. For, a state that sets due process aside for people deemed unwanted damages the same legal protections that every person within its borders depends on, including its own citizens.

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