Latest
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Detention by Any Other Name
Calling detention a holding or restriction centre does not change what it is, but it can strip away the safeguards the law gives to those deprived of liberty.
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The Citizenship Act, 1955
Full text of the Citizenship Act, 1955, as published on the Government of India’s Indian Citizenship Online portal.
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Statelessness and the Limits of Custom
Is there a binding international duty on all states to reduce statelessness, or does it exist only for those that have accepted it by treaty?
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Citizenship by Circular
Citizenship is among the most important rights a person can hold, yet the rules that decide it lie largely hidden in notifications, officer orders, guidelines and SOPs.
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Assam’s Citizenship Question and the Weight of History
Assam’s repeated re-determination of citizenship risks being disproportionate and rewriting a shared history of Assam and Bengal as one of intrusion.
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Judging the Foreigners, Part II: Training and Independence
Whether Foreigners Tribunal members should be advocates or judges, how they should be trained, and whether their dependence on the government allows them to be called independent.
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Judging the Foreigners, Part I: Who Sits in Judgment?
Foreigners Tribunals do the work of courts, so who sits on them, what qualifications they hold and whether their independence is secured deserve far closer scrutiny.
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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.
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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.
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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.
