Former Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi on Saturday questioned the credibility of tribunals in detecting foreigners.

Addressing a news conference here, Gogoi said: “People have lost faith in the operations of the foreigners tribunals. The government should order a probe into the operations of these tribunals. Mohammad Sanaullah, who served the army for 30 years, was sent to a detention camp. This raised questions over the credibility of the foreigner tribunals’ functioning. The tribunals were set up to detect foreigners, not to harass genuine citizens.”

There are 100 foreigner tribunals across Assam and the home ministry will set up another 200.

Criticising the state government, Gogoi said: “The Assam government has no contribution in getting Sanaullah bailed. The government has failed to take action against Assam police investigating officer Chandramal Das.”

Gogoi also alleged that the exercise of updating the National Register of Citizens (NRC) to detect illegal foreigners with crores of rupees spent was wasted. “The NRC has no value now. It is obvious that the names of lakhs of citizens will be excluded from the final register.”

Several students’ bodies expressed concern over the “false” objections raised by persons with “vested interests” to harass genuine citizens whose names have appeared in the draft NRC. The ongoing hearing of claims and objections will be completed by June 15. Anyone can object to a person’s inclusion in the NRC. The objection can be raised in a form, addressing the local registrar of citizen registration. The form enumerates five reasons for objections, covering legacy (who the applicant claims descent from) and pending citizenship cases against the applicant.

The NRC is being updated in Assam under the Supreme Court’s supervision to detect foreigners living illegally in Assam. The apex court set July 31 deadline for publication of the final NRC.

The complete draft NRC, published on July 30 last year, contains the names of 28,983,677 people of total 32,991,384 applicants. Those left out of the complete draft were given a chance to file claims to include their names in the final register.