New Delhi: In pursuance of its order last year, the Gauhati high court has given a timeframe to the Assam government to shift foreigners’ detention centres out of district jail premises.On August 21, the high court granted the state government 45 days to complete the construction of the detention centre at Matia in Goalpara district and shift the detenues to it thereafter. The stand-alone detention centre at Matia, which has been under construction for some years now at a cost of Rs 64 crore, is funded by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and can house at least 3,000 inmates.From 2009 onwards, Assam has been operating detention centres within district jails. Currently, it has six such centres at jails in Jorhat, Goalpara, Kokrajhar, Silchar, Dibrugarh and Tezpur. They house persons declared foreigners by the foreigners’ tribunals that exclusively function in the border state. As per the state advocate general’s submission to the high court, there are 177 ‘declared foreigners’ in these centres.In October last year, the high court, hearing a petition filed by Santanu Borthakur, Abantee Dutta and Dipika Sarkar, had asked the state government to take steps to shift out the detention centres from the six district jails. Justice Achinta Malla Bujor Baruah had then pointed out in his order that such a practise goes against the Supreme Court’s directives in the Bhim Singh vs Union of India case and the subsequent guidelines issued by the MHA to the state government in September 2014.The petitioners have raised the issue to question the manner in which the detention centres are required to be operated by the authorities to house foreigners, undocumented migrants and others awaiting deportation or repatriation to their counties of origin or awaiting adjudication of their respective claims.Hearing the petition this August 21, Justice Kalyan Rai Surana also directed the secretary of the state government’s home and political department to file a report at the end of the 45-day period covering the status of construction from August 11 onwards. As per a report in The Hindu, the court said:“The State envisaged that the construction of detention centre at Matia, Goalpara, would be completed by September 2021. In this regard, the learned Advocate-General has submitted that although he has received specific instruction from the concerned authorities of the Home Department that expeditious steps are being taken to complete the construction work of the detention centre within a period of 1 (one) month.”“But as a matter of abundant caution, the learned Advocate-General has prayed for allowing 6 (six) weeks’ time to the State to complete the construction of the proposed detention centre and to shift the detenues of the various detention centres….”The court will hear the matter again on September 30.Meanwhile, the state government, in a notification issued on August 17, stated that the detention centres would hereafter be known as ‘transit camps’. The home and political department notification said, “The nomenclature of detention centre is changed to transit camp for detention purpose.”Several media reports quoted an unnamed senior official of the department saying that not much should be read into the ‘cosmetic change’. “The government has copped criticisms for years over the detention centres, which sound like concentration camps. We are trying to make them more humane,” the official told The Hindu.