POLITICS-INDIA: Law on Reporting Foreigners to Police Gets Flak

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, May 31 2001 (IPS) - Widespread criticism of a law requiring Indians to inform police of foreigners staying at their residences or premises for more than 24 hours has forced the interior ministry to look for ways to tone down the rule.

A series of discussion at the interior ministry have so far been inconclusive, and a home ministry spokesman said Wednesday that a final decision would be forthcoming in the next few days.

The law, ordered before the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war which resulted in the creation of Bangladesh, was suddenly reiterated in government advertisements that appeared in several newspapers last week.

It quickly drew a welter of angry protests from people in the tourism industry and from businessmen who regularly entertain foreign partners.

“The order is absurd,” said Tarun Das, chief of the powerful Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) which has been one of the engines behind the country’s decade-old economic liberalisation.

Others who stand to be inconvenienced by the order are people who are married to foreigners or have visiting relations who are citizens of other countries.

But more than the inconvenience and even unpleasantness of dealing with police, many were concerned at the absurd situations that could arise from implementation of the order during peacetime.

“Every householder or other person shall report to the officer- in-charge of the nearest police station about the arrival or presence in his house or any premises occupied by him or under his control of any foreigner, if he knows or has reasons to believe that he is a foreigner,” the law says.

Soon after the advertisement carrying the order appeared, the influential ‘Times of India’ newspaper suggested that under the law President R K Narayanan would have to inform the police each time his daughter, a United States citizen, came calling.

The paper pointed out that if Brajesh Mishra, the country”s most powerful bureaucrat and national security adviser, failed to report a visit by his Italian son-in-law, he ran the risk of spending up to five years in jail.

The ‘Times’ listed Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha as among the key figures in government who were in a similar situations, because they had close relations who were either foreign citizens or were married to foreigners.

The home ministry spokesman, who may not be named under briefing rules, clarified that the intention of the order was not harass or cause inconvenience to a genuine visitor to India who carried valid documents.

He said an attempt was being made to closely define and limit the ambit and scope of the word “foreigners” in the order for the purposes of reporting their presence to police.

One proposal is to make the law applicable solely to nationals from the neighbouring countries of Pakistan and Afghanistan, about whom security agencies have apprehensions because of the conflict in Kashmir.

The law may also be made applicable to citizens from Bangladesh, many of whom have been illegally immigrating in large numbers to India over the years in search of livelihoods.

In April, the government ordered curbs on delegates from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, China and Sri Lanka attending international conferences held in this country. This drew protests from non-government organisations (NGO)s and those trying to promote people-to-people contacts.

Ravi Nair of the New Delhi-based South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre, which has consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), says the new rules would curb the work of NGOs.

Indian NGOs are already constrained by the home ministry, which closely scrutinises foreign funding received by these groups and have at times moved to stop such funding.

Interior ministry officials say the moves have been prompted by recent security breaches, including the hijacking by Kashmiri militants to Afghanistan of an Indian Airlines plane carrying more than 150 passengers in December 1999.