The Foreigners Act, 1946 was a pre-independence Act of the Imperial Legislative Assembly, enacted on November 23, 1946, to confer upon the Central Government certain powers in respect of foreigners in India. It defined a foreigner simply as "a person who is not a citizen of India". The Act was created to grant the Interim Government of India powers to regulate the entry, stay, and exit of non-citizens. A key provision was Section 9, which placed the onus of proving Indian citizenship upon the person claiming it, if their nationality was not evident. The Act also empowered the government to detain a person until their deportation to their country of origin.
The Foreigners Act, 1946, along with three other laws—the Passport (Entry into India) Act, 1920, the Registration of Foreigners Act, 1939, and the Immigration (Carriers' Liability) Act, 2000—was recently repealed and replaced by the Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025 (Act No. 13 of 2025). This new Act, which came into full effect on September 1, 2025, consolidates the fragmented legal framework into a single, comprehensive statute.
The new Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025 connects to the older laws by incorporating and modernizing their provisions, such as requiring foreigners to register with a Registration Officer upon arrival, as previously covered by the 1939 Act. It also strengthens enforcement by prescribing stricter penalties, such as up to five years' imprisonment for entry without a valid passport or travel document (Section 21), and authorizes police officers of the rank of Head Constable and above to make arrests without a warrant. The new law also mandates the establishment of a Bureau of Immigration to supervise functions like visa issuance and regulation of movement. The core concept of placing the burden of proof on the individual to prove citizenship, as in the old Section 9 of the 1946 Act, is retained in the new law under Section 16.