Sarbananda Sonowal

Early life and education

Sarbananda Sonowal was born on 31 October 1961 in Molokgaon located in the Dibrugarh district of Assam to Shri Jibeswar Sonowal and Dineswari Sonowal. He did his Bachelor of English Honours from Dibrugarh University and went on to do his LLB from Guwahati University. He also started his political career from here.

Political career

Sarbananda Sonowal was the President of Assam's oldest student body, the All Assam Students Union from 1992 to 1999. After that, he became a member of the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP). In 2001, he was elected the MLA from Assam's Moran constituency. In 2004, he became a Lok Sabha member representing Dibrugarh constituency and continued to be so till 2009 before joining the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2011. In 2014 general election for Lok Sabha he was appointed to head State's 16th Lok Sabha Elections Assam by Bharatiya Janata Party, and in the same year he was also elected as Member of Parliament, 16th Lok Sabha from Lakhimpur Constituency, he was then appointed as Union Minister of State-Independent Charge, of the Government of India under the Modi Government at the centre. He was selected as the CM candidate of BJP for the 2016 Assam Assembly Election. On 19 May 2016, Sarbananda Sonowal won the Assembly Election from Majuli Constituency making himself the next Chief Minister of Assam from Bharatiya Janata Party.

Biographical data

Sarbananda Sonowal resigned from all executive posts within AGP and left the party, due to dissatisfaction with and amongst the senior leadership of the party who were trying to forge an alliance with a party that was against the scrapping of the controversial IMDT Act. On 8 February 2011, Sonowal joined BJP in the presence of the then BJP National President Nitin Gadkari and senior leaders like Varun Gandhi, Vijay Goel, Bijoya Chakravarty and state BJP president Ranjit Dutta. He was immediately appointed as a member of the BJP National Executive and later on the State Spokesperson of the BJP unit, prior to his current assignment to head the state as the new president. On 28 January 2016, BJP Parliamentary Board announced Sarbananda Sonowal as BJP Chief Ministerial candidate of Assam. He is not married.[1]

Positions held

Social and cultural activities

Sports and clubs

Role removing the IMDT Act

Faced with the problem of massive migration from Bangladesh into Assam, the government tried to put up legislation in place to detect and deport foreign nationals. Eventually, the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) Act, 1983 (IMDT Act) came into being following the Assam Accord signed between the Government of India and the All Assam Students Union (AASU) to end the decade-long anti-foreigner agitation.

The IMDT Act is an instrument passed by Indian Parliament when there was no MP elected from Assam, to detect illegal immigrants (from Bangladesh) and expel them from Assam. While the IMDT Act operates only in Assam, the Foreigners Act (1946) applies to the rest of the country. It is applicable to those Bangladeshi nationals who settled in Assam on or after 25 March 1971. Under the Act, the onus of proving the citizenship of a suspected illegal alien rests on the complainant, often the police. On the other hand, according to the provisions of the Foreigners Act, the onus lies with the person suspected to be an alien.

Sonowal took the issue of Bangladeshi infiltration to the Supreme Court. By its judgement dated 12 July 2005, the court struck down the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) Act, 1983, as unconstitutional and termed Bangladeshi infiltration an "external aggression" and directed that "the Bangladesh nationals who have illegally crossed the border and have trespassed into Assam or are living in other parts of the country have no legal right of any kind to remain in India and they are liable to be deported."