Tribunals can’t overturn its own finding on Assam foreigners: SC

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has ruled that once a designated Foreigner Tribunals, rejects Assam government’s claim about a person being an illegal Bangladeshi immigrant who entered the state after March 25, 1971, the tribunal cannot review its own order on the administration’s fresh plea with additional documents.
A tribunal had on Feb 15, 2018, after considering oral and documentary evidence, in a case filed in 2016, decided that one Rejia Khatun was not a foreigner from Bangladesh who entered India on or after March 25, 1971.
There was another case registered in 2012 alleging the same person to be a foreigner from Bangladesh. This was taken up for hearing on Dec 24, 2019, and the tribunal ruled that despite its Feb 15 order, it had the power to scrutinize documents and materials and even its findings in earlier proceedings. This was challenged by Khatun before the Gauhati HC, which upheld the power of the tribunal to go into the question afresh notwithstanding the earlier decision declaring Khatun as not a foreigner.
Senior advocate Pijush Roy, appearing for Khatun, told a bench of Justices A S Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan that the tribunals had no power to review its own orders. Accepting the argument, the bench said the state govt was a party to the 2018 order and neither did it seek recall of the order nor challenge it before the HC.

“The (Dec 2019) order indicates that the Tribunal wants to sit in an appeal against its own concluded judgment and order. Such power can never be exercised by the Tribunal. The remedy of the State Government or for that matter the Central Government was to challenge the order dated Feb 15, 2018,” it said.
The bench said the tribunal is powerless to reconsider its own orders and set aside the HC order as well as the Dec 24, 2019, decision of the tribunal. In addition, the bench shut out the Centre or Assam govt from challenging the tribunal’s 2018 order.