Statelessness & Citizenship Review 2020 2(1) affirmative action) has been adhered to. For example, s 10 of the Consumer Protection Act, 1986 provides that that every District Consumer Forum shall have a woman member. 90 Matters are only worsened by the fact that such members (mostly lawyers) who are recruited are not provided with any substantial training in being judges and only attended a four-day training seminar. 91 It is also not clear what they are ‘taught’ in those four days. This may be contrasted with the United Kingdom, where the Judicial College (earlier Judicial Studies Board) provides training to members of tribunals functioning there on aspects such as appreciation of evidence, dealing with conflicting evidence, admissibility of evidence and other practical guidance. 92 Given that the ‘problem’ of ‘outsider’ has persisted in Assam for a long time, and now 1.9 million cases of those excluded from the NRC are to be decided by FTs, it is only proper that the government should create a sub-stream of qualified and independent judicial officers to decide these cases in the decades to come. E Members of FTs Lack Decisional Autonomy The independence of an adjudicating authority is central to the rule of law. The independence of an adjudicating authority means freedom from prejudices as well as the ability to decide a case only on its merit. In this context, one of the biggest challenges faced by FTs is the determination of the identity of an individual. As a general rule, the identity of the person being proceeded against or tried is irrelevant — but in FTs it is the identity that is to be established. Therefore, there is a compelling case to ensure that the adjudicating authority does not get prejudiced by any dominant socio-political discourse on who is a foreigner and who is a citizen, and retains the ability to appreciate and apply a pre-determined set of rules independently. The FTs in Assam have adjudicated 129,009 cases, 93 of which more than 60% are orders passed without the presence of the person concerned. 94 They are 90 91 92 93 94 Consumer Protection Act, 1986 (India) Act No 68 of 1986, s 10. See Designed to Exclude (Report, Amnesty International 2019) 5 <https://amnesty.org.in/wpcontent/uploads/2019/11/Assam-Foreigners-Tribunals-Report-1.pdf> (‘Designed to Exclude’). The website of United Kingdom Judiciary described judicial college’s Tribunal Committee in the following words: As part of the Judicial College each tribunal delivers a training programme for judges and members who sit in that jurisdiction. The Tribunals Committee has overall responsibility for tribunals judicial training with jurisdiction in England and for reserved tribunals in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. The committee carries out general high level oversight of judicial training across tribunals and will, when appropriate, take account of the interests of devolved tribunals and those tribunals which subsequently transfer into HMCTS. See ‘Tribunals’ Courts and Tribunals Judiciary (Web Page) <https://www.judiciary.uk/about-the-judiciary/training-support/judicial-college/tribunals/>. Unstarred Question No 3558 Answered on 10 Dec 2019 (Letter, Parliament of India, 2019) <http://164.100.47.194/Loksabha/Questions/QResult15.aspx?qref=10079&lsno=17>. Unstarred Question No 1724 Answered on 2 July 2020 (Letter, Parliament of India, 2020). <http://loksabhaph.nic.in/Questions/QResult15.aspx?qref=1909&lsno=17> (‘Unstarred Question No 1724’). 63959 (sixty three thousand nine hundred fifty nine) persons have been declared foreigners through ex-parte proceedings by Foreigners’ Tribunals in Assam from 1985 to 28th February, 2019. 129