Latest
-
Suspicion as Procedure: A Constitutional Critique of the MHA’s 2025 Deportation SOP
The Ministry of Home Affairs’ letter of 2 May 2025 builds a complete apparatus of identification, detention, removal and civil erasure without once mentioning a court, a tribunal or a hearing. An administrative and constitutional critique.
-
The Attorney General’s Concession: Hans Muller and the Limits of Detaining Foreigners
In Hans Muller, India’s first Attorney General accepted that an unrestricted executive power to detain foreigners could not survive the Constitution. The logic of that concession still matters.
-
Identifying the ‘Outsider’: An Assessment of Foreigners Tribunals in Assam
Assam’s Foreigners Tribunals decide whether a person belongs to India. They were never created by Parliament, and their design does not meet the promise of effective adjudication under the Constitution.
-
The Foreigners Act, 1946: Its Preamble and the Constitution
Document: The Foreigners Act, 1946 (31 of 1946), dated 23rd November, 1946, as amended. Download the Act (PDF) Status: This Act has been repealed by the Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025, which came into force on 1 September 2025. It…
-
Gender, Documents and the Burden of Belonging
There is a particular cruelty in a law that asks a woman to prove where she came from, using papers that were never written with her in mind. Citizenship, in the form it takes before a tribunal, is rarely a…
