Human Rights Violations by Assam NRC in India
First of all let me clear this that WE ARE NOT AGAINST NRC PROCESS being carried out in Assam as per Supreme Court Directions. We are just going to highlight its IMPERFECTIONS which are going to impact huge impact on millions of GENUINE people in the state. The final draft of the National Register of Citizens for Assam, published on July 30 2018, is a good document with some shortcomings.
Opportunities
1. The updating of NRC will lead to identification of illegal migrants and the resources of the indigenous Assamese people will be rightfully secured.
2. It will be possible for the state and central government to carry out targeted Public Distribution of basic necessities and amenities to the deserving.
3. A huge chunk of vote bank, especially Muslims from Bangladesh, will become invalid. This will help the ruling BJP government, to appease the existing Assamese voters by meeting their aspirations and also nullifying the negative Muslim votes.
4. Implementation of a number of very ambitious development projects in Assam and other North East states that are in the pipeline will need workforce. Providing work-permits to these illegal migrants can assure a readily available unskilled workforce at cheaper rates.
5. Assam will become violence-free as the question of illegal migrants would be resolved and work for development of the State can commence unhindered and without any fear of disruption. And much more benefits are there.
Officially, the NRC process will address the issue of illegal migrants, specifically from Bangladesh. The National Register of Citizens was first published in 1951 to record citizens, their houses and holdings. Updating the NRC to root out foreigners was a demand during the Assam Agitation (1979-1985)
The Citizenship Act of 1955 was amended after the Assam Accord for all Indian-origin people who came from Bangladesh before January 1, 1966 to be deemed as citizens. Those who came between January 1, 1966 and March 25, 1971 were eligible for citizenship after registering and living in the State for 10 years while those entering after March 25, 1971, were to be deported. There have been several waves of migration to Assam from Bangladesh, but the biggest was in March 1971 when the Pakistan army crackdown forced many to flee to India. The Assam Accord of 1985 that ended the six-year anti-foreigners' agitation decided upon the midnight of March 24, 1971 as the cut-off date. NRC is not the initiative of any political party but the result of a Supreme Court order, in response to a clutch of petitions and in the wake of many years of student agitations against what they considered an influx of foreigners into the state.
The current situation in Assam stems from the failure by the state and society to grasp the long-term implications of unchecked illegal migration. A few preventive steps adopted on a long-term basis could have ensured a check on the movement of people from across the border. There would be no need for NRC, the migrants’ flight would take a different course and the shrill voices opposing the identification of foreign nationals in Assam would not have been heard at all. The blame for this must be shared by the people of Assam for not being vigilant enough and the successive governments both at the state and Centre that displayed a total disregard to the danger continuously knocking on the door for the past several decades.
The question of undocumented migrants was where the NRC was born. In response to constant agitations by students’ unions over fears that the so-called illegal immigrants would outnumber the indigenous people of Assam, the Supreme Court in 2014 ordered that the NRC, first prepared in 1951 but riddled with problems, be updated by January 2016. The first list was out on December 30, 2017 and the final draft was released last week. Of the approximately 3.29 crore applicants, 40 lakh people have been excluded from the list and will now have to submit fresh documents to prove citizenship.
There are already six detention centers for the D-Voters (Dubious Voters) in Assam located at Goalpara, Kokrajhar, Silchar, Dibrugarh, Jorhat and Tezpur. It will become a massive exercise for administration to accommodate a large number of illegal migrants after the NRC has been updated.
“They must go back where they came from,” is the demand. This is not simple. These people consider themselves Indian, not Bangladeshi. In fact, Bangladesh does not accept them as citizens. Which means that several million people are at risk of becoming stateless. There is wild talk of deportation, wrenching people from their communities and families. Or corralling them in detention camps – which would hardly solve the problem since denying people a livelihood, would be a much greater strain on resources than having them live productive lives. Any of these moves would also shame India internationally for violating basic rights, and might even create a real threat to security.
India is a mishmash of ethnicities, languages, cultures, and religions. Indian political leaders boast often of this diversity, and the fact that India survives, even celebrates, these differences. But millions of Indians today cannot claim domicile in the place they live by establishing rights of descent. For instance, the Tamilian born in Delhi, raised in Bhopal, now residing in Jaipur. The Malayali who grew up in Lucknow, married a Naga, and now lives in Vishakhapatnam. Or the Adivasi from Madhya Pradesh, schooled in Dehradun and now working in Kolkata. There are Gujaratis who have never lived in Gujarat. Sikhs who have never lived in Punjab.
We don’t want a single foreigner’s name to be included in the final NRC. But no genuine Indian citizen should be excluded from the list. All genuine Indians must be included in the NRC.
The politics of citizens’ registers underlines the problem of migratory politics, refracted through the layered memories of many historical events. It began in the colonial era when the British attempted to import labour for the plantations. Major displacements like Partition and the Bangladesh war added to a huge “illegal” population. “Legality” is determined through certificates. Legitimacy is a stamped paper. But the question one asks is, what happens to the ones who have grown roots, who have brought land in the area? Do they not count with the stroke of a pen? In fact, it forces one to open up the question of who is a citizen? Is citizenship based on land, residence, identity, cultural roots, language, and ethnicity? Or is it a formal certificate, a clerical endorsement that makes one a citizen? Informal economies operate according to parallel rules, with residents getting regularized over time and obtaining the entitlements of citizenship after decades of stay. Here, the temporariness of the migrant is something that haunts her. Vulnerable though she is, she also becomes prey to electoral politics of corrupt politicians seeking instant constituencies.
The NRC process is a necessary first step, but does not by itself make it possible for the state to deport illegals, as major legal lacunae and political minefields remain. This because our politicians see illegal migrants as vote banks, and hence have found no common ground for making laws that are realistic and workable.
Liberals have to understand a practical reality: India is the only country that can guarantee the rights of Indic religious minorities. They have to be given preference for asylum. Muslims, Christians and others have scores of Islamic and Christian countries to seek refuge in. The mere fact that plural India does not discriminate on the basis of religion does not mean that we become a refuge for all persecuted minorities elsewhere – something that creates demographic pressures in local communities, as has happened in Assam.
The issue is simple: morally, countries that discriminate in favor of one Abrahamic religion or the other ought to be the first port of call for refugees from non-Indic faiths. India is the first port of call for those persecuted for their Indic religious origins.
Among the serious roadblocks and loopholes which may render the NRC list non-actionable or meaningless are the following:
1. That has serious implications for a large number of Muslim and even some Bengali-speaking Hindu residents. The 40,07,707 people who have been left out of the NRC include former President Fakruddin Ali Ahmed’s brother’s family, which claims to have lost its documents in the floods in 2000, Azmal Haque, who retired from the Indian army after serving for 30 years, an MLA of the Assam government and the wife of another legislator, both Hindu. Thus, there are many anomalies that can lead to much injustice. All people excluded from NRC Draft need to figure out how to recover papers lost during relocations for work or marriage, in floods, or during the violent insurgency in the state. Like many Indians elsewhere, some of these people are too poor to possess any identification – all they hold onto is crumpled currency that will buy their families another meal.
Nobody is perfect in the world. Most of the people who made it to the NRC List are lucky and blessed enough to have kept the decades old documents as required for NRC inclusions. But not all five fingers are alike. In the same way many people who are genuine citizens of in the state are not lucky enough to have kept the documents of ancestors which are decades old. Many peoples are illiterate, poor who are hardly earning enough to just survive in this world. Many people are even not so lucky enough to just survive and hardly get one time of food in a day and some even don’t get the same every day.
What is needed, however, is proof that a citizen’s ancestors’ names were in the 1951 census, or in the electoral rolls, or land papers. All this was very well for the educated, even though many among them were running from pillar to post to get their long lost documents. However, for the poor and illiterate, these problems are often insurmountable. Many have no papers, neither are their names on voter lists nor are their forefathers registered.
While some of them may genuinely be foreign nationals, many genuine citizens, too, may not possess any documentary evidence to prove their citizenship. Harrowing tales are coming in every day of genuine Bengali speaking Muslims being targeted as foreign nationals. With the prevalent anti-immigrant mood in the state, officials are quick to band every Bengali-speaking Muslim as a Bangladeshi, provided the citizen does not possess the necessary documents.
The problem is that India does not have compulsory birth, marriage and death registration and many citizens, being illiterate, are unable to produce any record. Some others are too poor to argue their case and do not have enough legal assistance to prove their citizenship.
The claims of those left out in the NRC must be heard carefully, humanely.
2. We have absolutely no deal with Bangladesh to deport any illegal immigrant, since the latter has not even acknowledged formally that its citizens may be sneaking across to India. Without such an acknowledgement, there is no way India can push detected illegals across the border. Even if we push a few thousand of them, they will be back by wriggling under another fence after bribing the border guards.
Corruption is a disease, a cancer that eats into the cultural, political and economic fabric of society, and destroys the functioning of vital organs. In the words of Transparency International, “Corruption is one of the greatest challenges of the contemporary world. It undermines good government, fundamentally distorts public policy, leads to the misallocation of resources, harms the private sector and private sector development and particularly hurts the poor.”
India is one of the countries which are suffering due to the existence of Corruption. Impact of corruption is very hard on public life. This is more of awkward and defaming condition than being problematic. But it appears that the corruption is ever rising and unstoppable. Further the people involved in corruption seem to be hiding themselves by blaming others. Even they are proud of themselves as they made more money in short time.
“Our hope for the future depends on our resolution as a nation in dealing with the scourge of Corruption. Success will require an acceptance that, in many respects, we are a sick society. It is perfectly correct to assert that all this was spawned by apartheid. No amount of self-induced Amnesia will change the reality of history. But it is also a reality of the present that among the new cadres in various levels of government you will find individuals who are as corrupt as – if not more than – those they found in government. When a leader in a provincial legislation siphons off resources meant to fund service by legislators to the people; when employees of a government institution set up to help empower those who were excluded by apartheid defraud it for their own enrichment, then we must admit that we have a sick society. This problem manifests itself in all areas of life” - Nelson Mandela
Corruption affects us all. It threatens sustainable economic development, ethical values and justice; it destabilizes our society and endangers the rule of law. It undermines the institutions and values of our democracy. But because public policies and public resources are largely beneficial to poor people, it is they who suffer the harmful effects of corruption most grievously.
To be dependent on the government for housing, healthcare, education, security and welfare, makes the poor most vulnerable to corruption since it stalls service delivery. Delays in infrastructure development, poor building quality and layers of additional costs are all consequences of corruption.
Many acts of corruption deprive our citizens of their constitutional and their human rights.
“By saying Bangladeshis are coming every day, we imply that we don’t trust our own Border Security Force,” says Hafiz Ahmed, an activist who heads Char-Chapori Sahitya Parishad, a literary body.
The corruption at Border & Petrol Police are urgent problem and they “pose a national security threat”. What Govt has done for decades on this?
Corrupt officials have given sensitive information and waved tons of drugs and thousands of undocumented immigrants through the border in exchange for millions of rupees in bribes. Many operate at official ports of entry, undermining the millions of rupees the government has already spent on fencing, drones, radar, surveillance blimps, agents etc.
There is no work on stopping corruption, punishing the corrupts by the Govt. The Govt. should be called for more aggressive measures to root them out.
3. We have still not made a clear distinction between illegal immigrants who were forced to come to India due to religious discrimination (which basically means Hindus and the Chakmas), and those who have come over purely for economic reasons (mostly Muslims, but includes some Hindus as well). The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has been unable to pass even basic changes to the Citizenship Act, which would have allowed India to fast-track citizenships for the mostly Hindu victims of ethnic cleansing in Pakistan and Bangladesh. As always, India’s phony ‘secularists’ sprang into action to claim that the bill should accord equal treatment to all kinds of refugees, and not just those who can logically be assumed to be oppressed in our neighboring Muslim-majority countries.
The bill to amend the Citizenship Act, 1955, sought to make “illegal migrants who are Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, eligible for citizenship”, says a summary on the PRS Legislative Research website. “Under the Act, one of the requirements for citizenship by naturalization is that the applicant must have resided in India during the last 12 months, and for 11 of the previous 14 years. The Bill relaxes this 11-year requirement to six years for persons belonging to the same six religions and three countries. The Bill provides that the registration of Overseas Citizen of India cardholders may be cancelled if they violate any law.”
The point to note is this: you cannot solve the problem of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants without sorting out the issue of their religion, which essentially is shorthand for religious persecution by our Islamic neighbors. If Assam is going to deport illegal Hindu migrants, who were surely persecuted and intimidated in Bangladesh, but cannot always prove this in each and every case, then we are going to do them an injustice. We clearly need the amendment act as of yesterday. Millions of persecuted Hindus are today stateless due to this callous attitude on our part in the name of secularism.
According to Dhaka University professor Abul Barkat, between 1964 and 2013, over 11 million Hindus left Bangladesh, for a daily exodus rate of 632. If this rate continues, there will be no Hindu left in 30 years. It would be a travesty if Hindu-majority India decides to make them stateless, on the ground that deporting illegals means treating persecuted Hindus on a par with Muslim economic refugees from Bangladesh.
4. It does not make sense to make the NRC list applicable only to Assamese residents. The reality is that many illegals have now moved to many other cities, including Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and even some parts of Kerala. They may have gotten into electoral rolls, thanks to local vote bank politics. If someone whose name is erased from the NRC in Assam happily moves to Bengaluru or even Kolkata and gets himself or herself back onto a voters’ list, it will make the Assam part of the exercise meaningless. To be effective, the NRC process must be followed through in the other states, too, and Aadhaar must be used effectively to ensure that someone struck off the rolls in Assam does not surface in Kolkata or Delhi.
5. The exclusion of illegals from the NRC ignores the reality of their children who may have been born in India, and hence legally eligible for Indian citizenship by birth. If a child can’t be deported, can you deport the parents? Which human rights lawyer will not salivate at the prospect of receiving such cases to defend? Clearly, there is a legal loophole here that needs plugging.
6. It is nearly impossible to evict illegals who have woven themselves into the warp and weft of economic and political activity in a country. The US can build walls and adopt more aggressive postures to prevent Mexicans from streaming across the border, but illegal Hispanic labour is vital to the economies of many southern US states, including Texas and California, and they have huge political support as current or future vote banks for the Democratic Party.
In India, illegal immigrants are vote banks for Congress and the Left in Assam and West Bengal, and also in pockets of assembly constituencies in some of the major metros where they are encamped. Deporting them has economic consequences and will be politically tough. It is worth recalling that when the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party (B)JP government in Maharashtra tried to deport illegal Bangladeshis in 1998, the West Bengal government under the Left Front effectively politicized and sabotaged it. Trains sent with alleged illegals for deportation through the West Bengal border were waylaid and the refugees released. The situation will be no different today, with all “secular” parties likely to band together against any deportation, if at all it is attempted. Who knows, even the BJP may find that offering protection to illegals may give it a small edge in 2019.
7. The errors in exclusion and inclusion while the NRC is being updated owing to doubts over the credibility of 1951 census and the difficulties involved in proving an indigenous citizen could cause injustice to many people. The exercise is likely to result in a major upheaval and cause severe inconvenience to common people. Bangladesh is already struggling to accommodate a colossal influx of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar; it is unlikely to accept any more illegal migrants from India. India’s image in international arena could be tarnished as the status of these citizens would remain unsettled.
8. At upwards of four million, the number of those excluded from the second draft of the National Register of Citizens published on Monday has sparked great anxiety about the legal status of so many individuals. As with the first list published on December 31, 2017, the publication of the final draft before the Supreme Court-mandated and monitored exercise moves to the next phase of claims and objections wasn’t accompanied by major turbulence. And this despite lingering doubts over whether the process was indeed foolproof, or even warranted. Causes for concern have been aplenty, from the frenetic pace to meet deadlines in the face of an unrelenting apex court to the omission in July of 1,50,000 names from the 19 million that had made it to the first draft. Monday’s list again had its share of notable omissions, including serving and former legislators. Given such a gargantuan exercise, it is to the credit of the NRC bureaucracy and its 55,000-odd workforce that timelines have been adhered to. But even a skillfully devised system of digitized mapping of family trees is subject to human interface, subjective bias, and the inherent flaws in the NRC of 1951 and the electoral rolls of 1961 and 1971 that make up the co core of the 'legacy data'.
Bigger challenges lie ahead, especially after the final NRC list determines the precise number of deemed illegal immigrants; the state then has to grapple with what to do next. How India addresses the fate of those eventually left off the list will ascertain whether its democracy can lay claim to being humane or not. It is one thing to detain and deport illegal immigrants instantly when they cross the border.
9. The Congress has alleged that people of Assam were being issued notices on flimsy grounds and “at very short notice” asking them to appear for verification of their documents for the National Register of Citizens (NRC) that is being updated. A delegation led by Assam Pradesh Congress Committee president Ripun Bora on Friday met NRC State coordinator Prateek Hajela and submitted a memorandum for “checking harassment of people in the name of verification of documents” in preparation of the Supreme Court-monitored NRC.
In many cases it has also come to notice that NRC Officials even do not even tell people which documents are required for inclusion in NRC. Many people are illiterate and do know much technical details as to what documents are required to prove citizenship. NRC Officials should clearly tell and explain people to bring mentioned all the documents from which people can prove their citizenship. Many time NRC Officials just tell people to submit whatever documents they have and even they do not possess the required documents NRC Officials do not even tell people to bring such required documents to prove their citizenship. I visited NRC Official and got strange experience with the officials. I did not have necessary documents at the time and officials asked me to provide my Birth Certificate and note the date of birth and asked to leave. They did not even told me that all my documents are insufficient to prove my citizenship and I have to bring such documents for my inclusions in NRC. Again top ministerial officials are claiming that NRC Officials are very supportive and cooperative in nature who assists in the completion of NRC process. I would claim to that NRC Officials are NON-SUPPORTIVE, NON-COOPERATIVE, AND TAKES THEIR JOB CASUALLY which is generally pity state of any Govt Employee in the country. They can’t take their job pertaining to NRC casually which is going determine and affect millions of people in the state.
Unending circulars- The Congress alleged that citizens, primarily from remote rural areas and low on literacy, were being harassed, and that the entire exercise was being executed in haste. “There seems to be a never-ending issuance of notices and circulars to citizens in various districts to appear in remote corners of the State for verification of their documents,” the memorandum said. “The system put in place by the State Coordinator of NRC is fundamentally flawed,” it said. The nine-point memorandum also sought appointment of sensitized personnel at the verification centers to guide poor and illiterate people.
10. On June 11, 2018, four Special Rapporteurs of Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) submitted a letter to Minister of External Affairs, Sushma Swaraj addressing the racial bias and human rights violations resulting from the National Register of Citizen (NRC) process in Assam. Passivity and racist and xenophobic contours inform the political and cultural milieu in contemporary Assam, and more importantly, the media, different civil and cultural bodies, and intellectuals have remained passive to the anxieties and fears of the marginal groups who are at the receiving end of the whole process. In his article, Dr Dhrubajyoti Bora, then President of Asom Sahitya Sabha stated that the literary body had made a submission to the Supreme Court of India demanding that “in order to include and identify the khilonjiya (son of the soil, roughly translated) population of Assam in the citizenship register, all the communities listed in the Schedule Caste, The Schedule Tribe (Hills and Plains), Backward Classes, Other Backward Classes (OBCs), MOBCs lists, should be included in the citizenship register without any legacy data”.
While legacy data has been deemed as a cornerstone to be included in the NRC, relaxing these norms for certain sections while making it strict for others, dependent on language or religion, is another method of spreading xenophobia and practicing racial discrimination as the OHCHR letter rightly pointed out.
While it is acknowledged that the updating process is generally committed to retaining Indian citizens on the NRC, concerns have been raised that local authorities in Assam, which are deemed to be particularly hostile towards Muslims and people of Bengali descent, may manipulate the verification system in an attempt to exclude many genuine Indian citizens from the updated NRC.
These concerns have been heightened by the alleged misinterpretation of a High Court judgement of 2 May 2017 (Gauhati High Court, WP(C) 360/2017). In this judgement, the Court directs the Assam Border Police to open inquiries concerning the relatives of persons declared as foreigners and to subsequently refer them to the so-called Foreigners’ Tribunals. Based on this judgement, the State Coordinator of the NRC reportedly issued two orders dated 2 May 2018 (memo No. SPMU/NRC/HF-FT/537/2018/15-A) and 25 May 2018 (memo no. SPMU/NRC/HC-FT/537/2018/23). Pursuant to the orders, border police authorities are required to refer family members of “declared foreigners” to the Foreigners’ Tribunals. The duty to conduct a prior inquiry is not mentioned in the orders. Once relevant NRC authorities have been informed about the referral of a case, the concerned family member will automatically be excluded from the NRC. Their status will be recorded as “pending” until their citizenship has been determined by a Foreigners’ Tribunal.
It is therefore alleged that these orders may lead to the wrongful exclusion of close to two million names from the NRC, without a prior investigation and trial. In addition, it is alleged that the orders contravene a High Court judgement of 3 January 2013 (Guwahati High Court, State of Assam vs. Moslem Mondal and Others), which stipulates that automatic referrals to Foreigners’ Tribunals are not permissible as a fair and proper investigation is required prior to the referral of a case. The orders may also contravene section 3 (1) (a) of the Citizenship Act 1955, which grants citizenship at birth to anyone born in India on/after 26 January 1950, but prior to 1 July 1987.
Concerns about the implementation of the NRC update have also been heightened by the increasing number of persons declared to be foreigners by Foreigners’ Tribunals. Out of a total of 468,934 referrals to the Tribunals between 1985 and 2016, 80,194 people were declared foreigners. This figure increased drastically in 2017, reaching 13,434 in just eleven months. In this context, it is reported that members of Foreigners’ Tribunals in Assam experience increasing pressure from State authorities to declare more persons as foreigners. On 21st June 2017, 19 members of the Foreigners’ Tribunals in Assam were dismissed on ground of their under-performance over the last two years. More than 15 additional Tribunal members were issued with a strict warning to increase their efficiency. Considering that tribunal members serve on a contractual basis for two years, which may be extended on a needs and performance basis, these actions were perceived to be a thinly veiled threat to other Tribunal members.
Bengali Muslims continue to be disproportionately affected and targeted by Foreigners’ Tribunals as most persons asked to prove their citizenship before Tribunals reportedly lack the necessary means to do so. Even in cases when individuals produce the required documentation to prove their citizenship, many Bengali Muslims appear to be declared as foreigners based on technical reasons. The Tribunals are governed by the Foreigners Act 1946, which places the burden of proof on the accused to demonstrate his or her citizenship status. Officials of these Tribunals are empowered to find persons to be foreigners, on the basis of minor technical discrepancies in their citizenship documents, such as misspelling of names and age inconsistencies. In this regard, it is also alleged that there has been a notable and significant increase in the Tribunals’ findings of foreigner status as a result of the new Government coming into power. It is alleged that the Tribunals have been declaring large numbers of Bengali Muslims in Assam as foreigners, resulting in statelessness and risk of detention.
Finally, it is alleged that the potential discriminatory effects of the updated NRC should be seen in light of the history of discrimination and violence faced by Muslims of Bengali origin due to their status as ethnic, religious and linguistic minority and their perceived foreignness. Although the Bengali origin Muslims in Assam descend from peasant workers brought from the former Bengal and East Bengal starting in the 19th century under colonial rule, they have long been portrayed as irregular migrants. As a result of this rhetoric, Bengali Muslims have historically been the target of various human rights violations, including forced displacement, arbitrary expulsions and killings. In addition, since 1997, the Election Commission has arbitrarily identified a large number of Bengali people as so-called ‘doubtful or disputed voters’, resulting in their further disenfranchisement and the loss of entitlements to social protection as Indian citizens. More recently, the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2016 was introduced with the aim of making members of certain minority communities eligible for Indian citizenship, noting that they shall not be treated as illegal immigrants. While the bill applies to six minority communities – namely Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan - Bengali Muslims and other religious minorities are not included. The proposed amendment suggests a broader context of vulnerability of Bengali Muslims to unlawful exclusion from Indian citizenship.
11. Assam’s ‘foreigner’ identification and detention process is riddled with flaws, says a new report
The report was authored by Harsh Mander, who visited three districts in the state when he was a special monitor for the National Human Rights Commission. A new report has pointed out several flaws in the process to identify and incarcerate so-called foreigners in Assam. Due process is skipped during identification and the subsequent detention largely operates outside a proper legal regime, the report contends.
The report was drafted by activist Harsh Mander, who visited three Assam districts this January in his capacity as a Special Monitor for minorities and communal violence for the National Human Rights Commission. Mander has since quit from the position, citing the committee’s failure to act on the report.
A suspect is identified
In Assam, matters of nationality – a much contentious subject – are adjudicated by quasi courts known as foreigners’ tribunals according to the provisions of the Assam Accord. This was the agreement signed between the Union government and Assamese nationalists in 1985 to mark the end of a six-year-long, often violent anti-foreigner mass movement. Under this accord, everyone who could not prove that they or their ancestors entered Assam before the midnight of March 24, 1971 – in other words, before the beginning of the Bangladesh War – would be declared an illegal immigrant, irrespective of religion.
These tribunals take up cases referred to them by the local Foreigner Regional Registration Office, which itself works on the recommendations of the border police. This is the special division of the Assam police designated to spot identify suspected foreigners. Each border police unit has a jurisdiction of around 15-20 villages, which it surveys for suspected illegal immigrants.
Once it suspects a particular person to be a foreigner, it asks them to produce documents proving citizenship within 15 days, failing which it refers the person to the local Foreigner Regional Registration Office. The office conducts its own investigations and, if it is not reasonably satisfied about the person’s nationality, it sends the case for trial in the tribunal.
The anatomy of a foreigners’ tribunal
There are currently 100 foreigner’s tribunals in Assam. Most of them are of recent vintage, set up in 2015. Prior to that, those were 36 of them. The government claimed that the rise in number was to deal with an increasing backload of cases.
Till 2015, only a serving or retired district judge or an additional district judge was eligible to be appointed as a foreigner’s tribunal member. But when the new tribunals got functional in 2015, any practicing advocate over 55 years of age as on April 1, 2015, and with 10 years of experience as a lawyer can apply for the post.
The tribunals are governed by the Foreigners Act 1946, which places the burden of proof on the accused to prove that they are Indian citizens.
A trial follows
Mander’s report, however, citing interviews with activists and affected people, says that trials are often unfair for a range of reasons. The tribunal’s proceedings, the report says, are inherently biased against suspected foreigners. For one, the tribunals provide 15-20 days to submit documents whereas the district administration takes to two three months to provide the documents after applying for them, the report contends, quoting activists
There are many, the report avers, who not get a chance to defend themselves at all either because they do not receive notices from the tribunal or cannot afford legal representation. “We saw omnibus notices to large numbers of persons, sometimes naming some persons and simply adding a number for the others,” states the report. “Many persons are migrant workers, or were not at home, or for a variety of other reasons did not get the notice.”
Banished without trial
If people fail to turn up for their trial, the tribunal passes ex-parte orders against them declaring them foreigners, making them liable to be incarcerated in detention camps – often indefinitely, as India does not have any formal reparation arrangement with Bangladesh yet.
As the report notes: “Since there is no formal agreement between India and Bangladesh governments for India to deport persons they deem to be foreigners, not only are the persons who the Foreigners’ Tribunal judge to be foreigners detained for many years, there is no prospect of their eventual freedom from this incarceration. At present, it appears that they may actually be detained for the rest of their lives.”
An indefinite detention
The situation, the report notes, may only get worse in wake of the release of the National Register of Citizens. Since 2015, Assam started updating its citizens’ list known as the National Register of Citizens. The stated aim of the exercise is also to identify all “genuine citizens” living in Assam and root out “illegal immigrants”. A truncated first draft was released on January 1. The partial draft verified that 1.9 crore of the 3.29 crore individuals who applied to be included in the register were citizens of India. A second final list is scheduled to come out to June 30. It is feared that people who find themselves out of the updated list may be put into the same detention centers that house people declared as foreigners by the tribunals.
“The Indian state must therefore formulate and announce a clear long-term policy about how it will treat, and what will be the consequences, of a person being declared a ‘foreigner’,” the report contends. “This is more crucial than ever, because it is possible that the NRC may declare lakhs as foreigners. In such a case, does the state want to detain lakhs of people indefinitely?”
The key changes required are the following:
1. The government planned to set up assistance camps for the aggrieved people. NRC guidelines should be modified as a large number of women and children were facing difficulty in proving their lineage. The National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam should be updated not on “religious lines” and should concern with the identity of Indians only. It would be wrong to call those not included in the NRC as “infiltrators” as the final decision lay with the Foreigners Tribunals. Those not in the draft should get ample opportunity with adequate time to establish their citizenship claim. People who lack knowledge should be provided assistance. Full justice should be meted to all.
2. All illegals identified will be struck off electoral rolls, but can remain in India with work permits, which can be renewed annually, based on behavior. Work permits can be given for those whom Bangladesh identifies as its citizens. The rest should be permanently off the electoral rolls, since they anyway can’t be deported.
3. All illegals staying on should be asked to sign a legal pledge that they will not participate in political, anti-India or religious conversion activities, and any infringement means deportation. If no deportation is possible due to non-cooperation by Bangladesh, they can be detained in fenced colonies as non-citizens with reduced rights.
4. Giving citizenship to Hindu victims of genocide, ethnic cleansing or forced conversion in Pakistan and Bangladesh can easily be made effective by changing the wordings in the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2016, to say that minority communities in our neighborhood will be eligible for fast-track citizenship and/or permanent residency if they face violence, persecution, harassment or intimidation. This neutral definition – instead specifically mentioning only Hindus, Jains, etc. – will pass the test of fairness, and the actual discretion of letting in more Hindus can be exercised at the level of bureaucratic rules, where the presumption of persecution can be more easily upheld in the case of Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians. Those who don’t fall in these categories – like the Rohingyas of Myanmar or Ahmaddiyas in Pakistan – can be put in a special category, where they can be temporarily placed in camps and given basic refugee amenities, but not citizenship. They can be residents with United Nations financial support, and the presumption would be that they will return to Pakistan or Bangladesh or Myanmar once conditions improve. We need a humane, yet strategic law.
5. The only logical and sensible way to proceed in the matter of illegal immigrants is make changes in the law, and get Bangladesh on board to admit that at least some of the illegals are its citizens. It will probably never admit to persecuting Hindus.
Nobody is perfect in the world. Most of the people who made it to the NRC List are lucky and blessed enough to have kept the decades old documents as required for NRC inclusions. But not all five fingers are alike. In the same way many people who are genuine citizens of in the state are not lucky enough to have kept the documents of ancestors which are decades old. Many peoples are illiterate, poor who are hardly earning enough to just survive in this world. Many people are even not so lucky enough to just survive and hardly get one time of food in a day and some even don’t get the same every day.
The claims of those left out in the NRC must be heard carefully, humanely.
We don’t want a single foreigner’s name to be included in the final NRC. But no genuine Indian citizen should be excluded from the list. All genuine Indians must be included in the NRC.
FROM,
AN EXCLUDED PERSON FROM ASSAM NRC
ASHA KANTA SHARMA
ARN 401832202129075500948
Sign PetitionSign PetitionOpportunities
1. The updating of NRC will lead to identification of illegal migrants and the resources of the indigenous Assamese people will be rightfully secured.
2. It will be possible for the state and central government to carry out targeted Public Distribution of basic necessities and amenities to the deserving.
3. A huge chunk of vote bank, especially Muslims from Bangladesh, will become invalid. This will help the ruling BJP government, to appease the existing Assamese voters by meeting their aspirations and also nullifying the negative Muslim votes.
4. Implementation of a number of very ambitious development projects in Assam and other North East states that are in the pipeline will need workforce. Providing work-permits to these illegal migrants can assure a readily available unskilled workforce at cheaper rates.
5. Assam will become violence-free as the question of illegal migrants would be resolved and work for development of the State can commence unhindered and without any fear of disruption. And much more benefits are there.
Officially, the NRC process will address the issue of illegal migrants, specifically from Bangladesh. The National Register of Citizens was first published in 1951 to record citizens, their houses and holdings. Updating the NRC to root out foreigners was a demand during the Assam Agitation (1979-1985)
The Citizenship Act of 1955 was amended after the Assam Accord for all Indian-origin people who came from Bangladesh before January 1, 1966 to be deemed as citizens. Those who came between January 1, 1966 and March 25, 1971 were eligible for citizenship after registering and living in the State for 10 years while those entering after March 25, 1971, were to be deported. There have been several waves of migration to Assam from Bangladesh, but the biggest was in March 1971 when the Pakistan army crackdown forced many to flee to India. The Assam Accord of 1985 that ended the six-year anti-foreigners' agitation decided upon the midnight of March 24, 1971 as the cut-off date. NRC is not the initiative of any political party but the result of a Supreme Court order, in response to a clutch of petitions and in the wake of many years of student agitations against what they considered an influx of foreigners into the state.
The current situation in Assam stems from the failure by the state and society to grasp the long-term implications of unchecked illegal migration. A few preventive steps adopted on a long-term basis could have ensured a check on the movement of people from across the border. There would be no need for NRC, the migrants’ flight would take a different course and the shrill voices opposing the identification of foreign nationals in Assam would not have been heard at all. The blame for this must be shared by the people of Assam for not being vigilant enough and the successive governments both at the state and Centre that displayed a total disregard to the danger continuously knocking on the door for the past several decades.
The question of undocumented migrants was where the NRC was born. In response to constant agitations by students’ unions over fears that the so-called illegal immigrants would outnumber the indigenous people of Assam, the Supreme Court in 2014 ordered that the NRC, first prepared in 1951 but riddled with problems, be updated by January 2016. The first list was out on December 30, 2017 and the final draft was released last week. Of the approximately 3.29 crore applicants, 40 lakh people have been excluded from the list and will now have to submit fresh documents to prove citizenship.
There are already six detention centers for the D-Voters (Dubious Voters) in Assam located at Goalpara, Kokrajhar, Silchar, Dibrugarh, Jorhat and Tezpur. It will become a massive exercise for administration to accommodate a large number of illegal migrants after the NRC has been updated.
“They must go back where they came from,” is the demand. This is not simple. These people consider themselves Indian, not Bangladeshi. In fact, Bangladesh does not accept them as citizens. Which means that several million people are at risk of becoming stateless. There is wild talk of deportation, wrenching people from their communities and families. Or corralling them in detention camps – which would hardly solve the problem since denying people a livelihood, would be a much greater strain on resources than having them live productive lives. Any of these moves would also shame India internationally for violating basic rights, and might even create a real threat to security.
India is a mishmash of ethnicities, languages, cultures, and religions. Indian political leaders boast often of this diversity, and the fact that India survives, even celebrates, these differences. But millions of Indians today cannot claim domicile in the place they live by establishing rights of descent. For instance, the Tamilian born in Delhi, raised in Bhopal, now residing in Jaipur. The Malayali who grew up in Lucknow, married a Naga, and now lives in Vishakhapatnam. Or the Adivasi from Madhya Pradesh, schooled in Dehradun and now working in Kolkata. There are Gujaratis who have never lived in Gujarat. Sikhs who have never lived in Punjab.
We don’t want a single foreigner’s name to be included in the final NRC. But no genuine Indian citizen should be excluded from the list. All genuine Indians must be included in the NRC.
The politics of citizens’ registers underlines the problem of migratory politics, refracted through the layered memories of many historical events. It began in the colonial era when the British attempted to import labour for the plantations. Major displacements like Partition and the Bangladesh war added to a huge “illegal” population. “Legality” is determined through certificates. Legitimacy is a stamped paper. But the question one asks is, what happens to the ones who have grown roots, who have brought land in the area? Do they not count with the stroke of a pen? In fact, it forces one to open up the question of who is a citizen? Is citizenship based on land, residence, identity, cultural roots, language, and ethnicity? Or is it a formal certificate, a clerical endorsement that makes one a citizen? Informal economies operate according to parallel rules, with residents getting regularized over time and obtaining the entitlements of citizenship after decades of stay. Here, the temporariness of the migrant is something that haunts her. Vulnerable though she is, she also becomes prey to electoral politics of corrupt politicians seeking instant constituencies.
The NRC process is a necessary first step, but does not by itself make it possible for the state to deport illegals, as major legal lacunae and political minefields remain. This because our politicians see illegal migrants as vote banks, and hence have found no common ground for making laws that are realistic and workable.
Liberals have to understand a practical reality: India is the only country that can guarantee the rights of Indic religious minorities. They have to be given preference for asylum. Muslims, Christians and others have scores of Islamic and Christian countries to seek refuge in. The mere fact that plural India does not discriminate on the basis of religion does not mean that we become a refuge for all persecuted minorities elsewhere – something that creates demographic pressures in local communities, as has happened in Assam.
The issue is simple: morally, countries that discriminate in favor of one Abrahamic religion or the other ought to be the first port of call for refugees from non-Indic faiths. India is the first port of call for those persecuted for their Indic religious origins.
Among the serious roadblocks and loopholes which may render the NRC list non-actionable or meaningless are the following:
1. That has serious implications for a large number of Muslim and even some Bengali-speaking Hindu residents. The 40,07,707 people who have been left out of the NRC include former President Fakruddin Ali Ahmed’s brother’s family, which claims to have lost its documents in the floods in 2000, Azmal Haque, who retired from the Indian army after serving for 30 years, an MLA of the Assam government and the wife of another legislator, both Hindu. Thus, there are many anomalies that can lead to much injustice. All people excluded from NRC Draft need to figure out how to recover papers lost during relocations for work or marriage, in floods, or during the violent insurgency in the state. Like many Indians elsewhere, some of these people are too poor to possess any identification – all they hold onto is crumpled currency that will buy their families another meal.
Nobody is perfect in the world. Most of the people who made it to the NRC List are lucky and blessed enough to have kept the decades old documents as required for NRC inclusions. But not all five fingers are alike. In the same way many people who are genuine citizens of in the state are not lucky enough to have kept the documents of ancestors which are decades old. Many peoples are illiterate, poor who are hardly earning enough to just survive in this world. Many people are even not so lucky enough to just survive and hardly get one time of food in a day and some even don’t get the same every day.
What is needed, however, is proof that a citizen’s ancestors’ names were in the 1951 census, or in the electoral rolls, or land papers. All this was very well for the educated, even though many among them were running from pillar to post to get their long lost documents. However, for the poor and illiterate, these problems are often insurmountable. Many have no papers, neither are their names on voter lists nor are their forefathers registered.
While some of them may genuinely be foreign nationals, many genuine citizens, too, may not possess any documentary evidence to prove their citizenship. Harrowing tales are coming in every day of genuine Bengali speaking Muslims being targeted as foreign nationals. With the prevalent anti-immigrant mood in the state, officials are quick to band every Bengali-speaking Muslim as a Bangladeshi, provided the citizen does not possess the necessary documents.
The problem is that India does not have compulsory birth, marriage and death registration and many citizens, being illiterate, are unable to produce any record. Some others are too poor to argue their case and do not have enough legal assistance to prove their citizenship.
The claims of those left out in the NRC must be heard carefully, humanely.
2. We have absolutely no deal with Bangladesh to deport any illegal immigrant, since the latter has not even acknowledged formally that its citizens may be sneaking across to India. Without such an acknowledgement, there is no way India can push detected illegals across the border. Even if we push a few thousand of them, they will be back by wriggling under another fence after bribing the border guards.
Corruption is a disease, a cancer that eats into the cultural, political and economic fabric of society, and destroys the functioning of vital organs. In the words of Transparency International, “Corruption is one of the greatest challenges of the contemporary world. It undermines good government, fundamentally distorts public policy, leads to the misallocation of resources, harms the private sector and private sector development and particularly hurts the poor.”
India is one of the countries which are suffering due to the existence of Corruption. Impact of corruption is very hard on public life. This is more of awkward and defaming condition than being problematic. But it appears that the corruption is ever rising and unstoppable. Further the people involved in corruption seem to be hiding themselves by blaming others. Even they are proud of themselves as they made more money in short time.
“Our hope for the future depends on our resolution as a nation in dealing with the scourge of Corruption. Success will require an acceptance that, in many respects, we are a sick society. It is perfectly correct to assert that all this was spawned by apartheid. No amount of self-induced Amnesia will change the reality of history. But it is also a reality of the present that among the new cadres in various levels of government you will find individuals who are as corrupt as – if not more than – those they found in government. When a leader in a provincial legislation siphons off resources meant to fund service by legislators to the people; when employees of a government institution set up to help empower those who were excluded by apartheid defraud it for their own enrichment, then we must admit that we have a sick society. This problem manifests itself in all areas of life” - Nelson Mandela
Corruption affects us all. It threatens sustainable economic development, ethical values and justice; it destabilizes our society and endangers the rule of law. It undermines the institutions and values of our democracy. But because public policies and public resources are largely beneficial to poor people, it is they who suffer the harmful effects of corruption most grievously.
To be dependent on the government for housing, healthcare, education, security and welfare, makes the poor most vulnerable to corruption since it stalls service delivery. Delays in infrastructure development, poor building quality and layers of additional costs are all consequences of corruption.
Many acts of corruption deprive our citizens of their constitutional and their human rights.
“By saying Bangladeshis are coming every day, we imply that we don’t trust our own Border Security Force,” says Hafiz Ahmed, an activist who heads Char-Chapori Sahitya Parishad, a literary body.
The corruption at Border & Petrol Police are urgent problem and they “pose a national security threat”. What Govt has done for decades on this?
Corrupt officials have given sensitive information and waved tons of drugs and thousands of undocumented immigrants through the border in exchange for millions of rupees in bribes. Many operate at official ports of entry, undermining the millions of rupees the government has already spent on fencing, drones, radar, surveillance blimps, agents etc.
There is no work on stopping corruption, punishing the corrupts by the Govt. The Govt. should be called for more aggressive measures to root them out.
3. We have still not made a clear distinction between illegal immigrants who were forced to come to India due to religious discrimination (which basically means Hindus and the Chakmas), and those who have come over purely for economic reasons (mostly Muslims, but includes some Hindus as well). The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has been unable to pass even basic changes to the Citizenship Act, which would have allowed India to fast-track citizenships for the mostly Hindu victims of ethnic cleansing in Pakistan and Bangladesh. As always, India’s phony ‘secularists’ sprang into action to claim that the bill should accord equal treatment to all kinds of refugees, and not just those who can logically be assumed to be oppressed in our neighboring Muslim-majority countries.
The bill to amend the Citizenship Act, 1955, sought to make “illegal migrants who are Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, eligible for citizenship”, says a summary on the PRS Legislative Research website. “Under the Act, one of the requirements for citizenship by naturalization is that the applicant must have resided in India during the last 12 months, and for 11 of the previous 14 years. The Bill relaxes this 11-year requirement to six years for persons belonging to the same six religions and three countries. The Bill provides that the registration of Overseas Citizen of India cardholders may be cancelled if they violate any law.”
The point to note is this: you cannot solve the problem of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants without sorting out the issue of their religion, which essentially is shorthand for religious persecution by our Islamic neighbors. If Assam is going to deport illegal Hindu migrants, who were surely persecuted and intimidated in Bangladesh, but cannot always prove this in each and every case, then we are going to do them an injustice. We clearly need the amendment act as of yesterday. Millions of persecuted Hindus are today stateless due to this callous attitude on our part in the name of secularism.
According to Dhaka University professor Abul Barkat, between 1964 and 2013, over 11 million Hindus left Bangladesh, for a daily exodus rate of 632. If this rate continues, there will be no Hindu left in 30 years. It would be a travesty if Hindu-majority India decides to make them stateless, on the ground that deporting illegals means treating persecuted Hindus on a par with Muslim economic refugees from Bangladesh.
4. It does not make sense to make the NRC list applicable only to Assamese residents. The reality is that many illegals have now moved to many other cities, including Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and even some parts of Kerala. They may have gotten into electoral rolls, thanks to local vote bank politics. If someone whose name is erased from the NRC in Assam happily moves to Bengaluru or even Kolkata and gets himself or herself back onto a voters’ list, it will make the Assam part of the exercise meaningless. To be effective, the NRC process must be followed through in the other states, too, and Aadhaar must be used effectively to ensure that someone struck off the rolls in Assam does not surface in Kolkata or Delhi.
5. The exclusion of illegals from the NRC ignores the reality of their children who may have been born in India, and hence legally eligible for Indian citizenship by birth. If a child can’t be deported, can you deport the parents? Which human rights lawyer will not salivate at the prospect of receiving such cases to defend? Clearly, there is a legal loophole here that needs plugging.
6. It is nearly impossible to evict illegals who have woven themselves into the warp and weft of economic and political activity in a country. The US can build walls and adopt more aggressive postures to prevent Mexicans from streaming across the border, but illegal Hispanic labour is vital to the economies of many southern US states, including Texas and California, and they have huge political support as current or future vote banks for the Democratic Party.
In India, illegal immigrants are vote banks for Congress and the Left in Assam and West Bengal, and also in pockets of assembly constituencies in some of the major metros where they are encamped. Deporting them has economic consequences and will be politically tough. It is worth recalling that when the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party (B)JP government in Maharashtra tried to deport illegal Bangladeshis in 1998, the West Bengal government under the Left Front effectively politicized and sabotaged it. Trains sent with alleged illegals for deportation through the West Bengal border were waylaid and the refugees released. The situation will be no different today, with all “secular” parties likely to band together against any deportation, if at all it is attempted. Who knows, even the BJP may find that offering protection to illegals may give it a small edge in 2019.
7. The errors in exclusion and inclusion while the NRC is being updated owing to doubts over the credibility of 1951 census and the difficulties involved in proving an indigenous citizen could cause injustice to many people. The exercise is likely to result in a major upheaval and cause severe inconvenience to common people. Bangladesh is already struggling to accommodate a colossal influx of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar; it is unlikely to accept any more illegal migrants from India. India’s image in international arena could be tarnished as the status of these citizens would remain unsettled.
8. At upwards of four million, the number of those excluded from the second draft of the National Register of Citizens published on Monday has sparked great anxiety about the legal status of so many individuals. As with the first list published on December 31, 2017, the publication of the final draft before the Supreme Court-mandated and monitored exercise moves to the next phase of claims and objections wasn’t accompanied by major turbulence. And this despite lingering doubts over whether the process was indeed foolproof, or even warranted. Causes for concern have been aplenty, from the frenetic pace to meet deadlines in the face of an unrelenting apex court to the omission in July of 1,50,000 names from the 19 million that had made it to the first draft. Monday’s list again had its share of notable omissions, including serving and former legislators. Given such a gargantuan exercise, it is to the credit of the NRC bureaucracy and its 55,000-odd workforce that timelines have been adhered to. But even a skillfully devised system of digitized mapping of family trees is subject to human interface, subjective bias, and the inherent flaws in the NRC of 1951 and the electoral rolls of 1961 and 1971 that make up the co core of the 'legacy data'.
Bigger challenges lie ahead, especially after the final NRC list determines the precise number of deemed illegal immigrants; the state then has to grapple with what to do next. How India addresses the fate of those eventually left off the list will ascertain whether its democracy can lay claim to being humane or not. It is one thing to detain and deport illegal immigrants instantly when they cross the border.
9. The Congress has alleged that people of Assam were being issued notices on flimsy grounds and “at very short notice” asking them to appear for verification of their documents for the National Register of Citizens (NRC) that is being updated. A delegation led by Assam Pradesh Congress Committee president Ripun Bora on Friday met NRC State coordinator Prateek Hajela and submitted a memorandum for “checking harassment of people in the name of verification of documents” in preparation of the Supreme Court-monitored NRC.
In many cases it has also come to notice that NRC Officials even do not even tell people which documents are required for inclusion in NRC. Many people are illiterate and do know much technical details as to what documents are required to prove citizenship. NRC Officials should clearly tell and explain people to bring mentioned all the documents from which people can prove their citizenship. Many time NRC Officials just tell people to submit whatever documents they have and even they do not possess the required documents NRC Officials do not even tell people to bring such required documents to prove their citizenship. I visited NRC Official and got strange experience with the officials. I did not have necessary documents at the time and officials asked me to provide my Birth Certificate and note the date of birth and asked to leave. They did not even told me that all my documents are insufficient to prove my citizenship and I have to bring such documents for my inclusions in NRC. Again top ministerial officials are claiming that NRC Officials are very supportive and cooperative in nature who assists in the completion of NRC process. I would claim to that NRC Officials are NON-SUPPORTIVE, NON-COOPERATIVE, AND TAKES THEIR JOB CASUALLY which is generally pity state of any Govt Employee in the country. They can’t take their job pertaining to NRC casually which is going determine and affect millions of people in the state.
Unending circulars- The Congress alleged that citizens, primarily from remote rural areas and low on literacy, were being harassed, and that the entire exercise was being executed in haste. “There seems to be a never-ending issuance of notices and circulars to citizens in various districts to appear in remote corners of the State for verification of their documents,” the memorandum said. “The system put in place by the State Coordinator of NRC is fundamentally flawed,” it said. The nine-point memorandum also sought appointment of sensitized personnel at the verification centers to guide poor and illiterate people.
10. On June 11, 2018, four Special Rapporteurs of Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) submitted a letter to Minister of External Affairs, Sushma Swaraj addressing the racial bias and human rights violations resulting from the National Register of Citizen (NRC) process in Assam. Passivity and racist and xenophobic contours inform the political and cultural milieu in contemporary Assam, and more importantly, the media, different civil and cultural bodies, and intellectuals have remained passive to the anxieties and fears of the marginal groups who are at the receiving end of the whole process. In his article, Dr Dhrubajyoti Bora, then President of Asom Sahitya Sabha stated that the literary body had made a submission to the Supreme Court of India demanding that “in order to include and identify the khilonjiya (son of the soil, roughly translated) population of Assam in the citizenship register, all the communities listed in the Schedule Caste, The Schedule Tribe (Hills and Plains), Backward Classes, Other Backward Classes (OBCs), MOBCs lists, should be included in the citizenship register without any legacy data”.
While legacy data has been deemed as a cornerstone to be included in the NRC, relaxing these norms for certain sections while making it strict for others, dependent on language or religion, is another method of spreading xenophobia and practicing racial discrimination as the OHCHR letter rightly pointed out.
While it is acknowledged that the updating process is generally committed to retaining Indian citizens on the NRC, concerns have been raised that local authorities in Assam, which are deemed to be particularly hostile towards Muslims and people of Bengali descent, may manipulate the verification system in an attempt to exclude many genuine Indian citizens from the updated NRC.
These concerns have been heightened by the alleged misinterpretation of a High Court judgement of 2 May 2017 (Gauhati High Court, WP(C) 360/2017). In this judgement, the Court directs the Assam Border Police to open inquiries concerning the relatives of persons declared as foreigners and to subsequently refer them to the so-called Foreigners’ Tribunals. Based on this judgement, the State Coordinator of the NRC reportedly issued two orders dated 2 May 2018 (memo No. SPMU/NRC/HF-FT/537/2018/15-A) and 25 May 2018 (memo no. SPMU/NRC/HC-FT/537/2018/23). Pursuant to the orders, border police authorities are required to refer family members of “declared foreigners” to the Foreigners’ Tribunals. The duty to conduct a prior inquiry is not mentioned in the orders. Once relevant NRC authorities have been informed about the referral of a case, the concerned family member will automatically be excluded from the NRC. Their status will be recorded as “pending” until their citizenship has been determined by a Foreigners’ Tribunal.
It is therefore alleged that these orders may lead to the wrongful exclusion of close to two million names from the NRC, without a prior investigation and trial. In addition, it is alleged that the orders contravene a High Court judgement of 3 January 2013 (Guwahati High Court, State of Assam vs. Moslem Mondal and Others), which stipulates that automatic referrals to Foreigners’ Tribunals are not permissible as a fair and proper investigation is required prior to the referral of a case. The orders may also contravene section 3 (1) (a) of the Citizenship Act 1955, which grants citizenship at birth to anyone born in India on/after 26 January 1950, but prior to 1 July 1987.
Concerns about the implementation of the NRC update have also been heightened by the increasing number of persons declared to be foreigners by Foreigners’ Tribunals. Out of a total of 468,934 referrals to the Tribunals between 1985 and 2016, 80,194 people were declared foreigners. This figure increased drastically in 2017, reaching 13,434 in just eleven months. In this context, it is reported that members of Foreigners’ Tribunals in Assam experience increasing pressure from State authorities to declare more persons as foreigners. On 21st June 2017, 19 members of the Foreigners’ Tribunals in Assam were dismissed on ground of their under-performance over the last two years. More than 15 additional Tribunal members were issued with a strict warning to increase their efficiency. Considering that tribunal members serve on a contractual basis for two years, which may be extended on a needs and performance basis, these actions were perceived to be a thinly veiled threat to other Tribunal members.
Bengali Muslims continue to be disproportionately affected and targeted by Foreigners’ Tribunals as most persons asked to prove their citizenship before Tribunals reportedly lack the necessary means to do so. Even in cases when individuals produce the required documentation to prove their citizenship, many Bengali Muslims appear to be declared as foreigners based on technical reasons. The Tribunals are governed by the Foreigners Act 1946, which places the burden of proof on the accused to demonstrate his or her citizenship status. Officials of these Tribunals are empowered to find persons to be foreigners, on the basis of minor technical discrepancies in their citizenship documents, such as misspelling of names and age inconsistencies. In this regard, it is also alleged that there has been a notable and significant increase in the Tribunals’ findings of foreigner status as a result of the new Government coming into power. It is alleged that the Tribunals have been declaring large numbers of Bengali Muslims in Assam as foreigners, resulting in statelessness and risk of detention.
Finally, it is alleged that the potential discriminatory effects of the updated NRC should be seen in light of the history of discrimination and violence faced by Muslims of Bengali origin due to their status as ethnic, religious and linguistic minority and their perceived foreignness. Although the Bengali origin Muslims in Assam descend from peasant workers brought from the former Bengal and East Bengal starting in the 19th century under colonial rule, they have long been portrayed as irregular migrants. As a result of this rhetoric, Bengali Muslims have historically been the target of various human rights violations, including forced displacement, arbitrary expulsions and killings. In addition, since 1997, the Election Commission has arbitrarily identified a large number of Bengali people as so-called ‘doubtful or disputed voters’, resulting in their further disenfranchisement and the loss of entitlements to social protection as Indian citizens. More recently, the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2016 was introduced with the aim of making members of certain minority communities eligible for Indian citizenship, noting that they shall not be treated as illegal immigrants. While the bill applies to six minority communities – namely Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan - Bengali Muslims and other religious minorities are not included. The proposed amendment suggests a broader context of vulnerability of Bengali Muslims to unlawful exclusion from Indian citizenship.
11. Assam’s ‘foreigner’ identification and detention process is riddled with flaws, says a new report
The report was authored by Harsh Mander, who visited three districts in the state when he was a special monitor for the National Human Rights Commission. A new report has pointed out several flaws in the process to identify and incarcerate so-called foreigners in Assam. Due process is skipped during identification and the subsequent detention largely operates outside a proper legal regime, the report contends.
The report was drafted by activist Harsh Mander, who visited three Assam districts this January in his capacity as a Special Monitor for minorities and communal violence for the National Human Rights Commission. Mander has since quit from the position, citing the committee’s failure to act on the report.
A suspect is identified
In Assam, matters of nationality – a much contentious subject – are adjudicated by quasi courts known as foreigners’ tribunals according to the provisions of the Assam Accord. This was the agreement signed between the Union government and Assamese nationalists in 1985 to mark the end of a six-year-long, often violent anti-foreigner mass movement. Under this accord, everyone who could not prove that they or their ancestors entered Assam before the midnight of March 24, 1971 – in other words, before the beginning of the Bangladesh War – would be declared an illegal immigrant, irrespective of religion.
These tribunals take up cases referred to them by the local Foreigner Regional Registration Office, which itself works on the recommendations of the border police. This is the special division of the Assam police designated to spot identify suspected foreigners. Each border police unit has a jurisdiction of around 15-20 villages, which it surveys for suspected illegal immigrants.
Once it suspects a particular person to be a foreigner, it asks them to produce documents proving citizenship within 15 days, failing which it refers the person to the local Foreigner Regional Registration Office. The office conducts its own investigations and, if it is not reasonably satisfied about the person’s nationality, it sends the case for trial in the tribunal.
The anatomy of a foreigners’ tribunal
There are currently 100 foreigner’s tribunals in Assam. Most of them are of recent vintage, set up in 2015. Prior to that, those were 36 of them. The government claimed that the rise in number was to deal with an increasing backload of cases.
Till 2015, only a serving or retired district judge or an additional district judge was eligible to be appointed as a foreigner’s tribunal member. But when the new tribunals got functional in 2015, any practicing advocate over 55 years of age as on April 1, 2015, and with 10 years of experience as a lawyer can apply for the post.
The tribunals are governed by the Foreigners Act 1946, which places the burden of proof on the accused to prove that they are Indian citizens.
A trial follows
Mander’s report, however, citing interviews with activists and affected people, says that trials are often unfair for a range of reasons. The tribunal’s proceedings, the report says, are inherently biased against suspected foreigners. For one, the tribunals provide 15-20 days to submit documents whereas the district administration takes to two three months to provide the documents after applying for them, the report contends, quoting activists
There are many, the report avers, who not get a chance to defend themselves at all either because they do not receive notices from the tribunal or cannot afford legal representation. “We saw omnibus notices to large numbers of persons, sometimes naming some persons and simply adding a number for the others,” states the report. “Many persons are migrant workers, or were not at home, or for a variety of other reasons did not get the notice.”
Banished without trial
If people fail to turn up for their trial, the tribunal passes ex-parte orders against them declaring them foreigners, making them liable to be incarcerated in detention camps – often indefinitely, as India does not have any formal reparation arrangement with Bangladesh yet.
As the report notes: “Since there is no formal agreement between India and Bangladesh governments for India to deport persons they deem to be foreigners, not only are the persons who the Foreigners’ Tribunal judge to be foreigners detained for many years, there is no prospect of their eventual freedom from this incarceration. At present, it appears that they may actually be detained for the rest of their lives.”
An indefinite detention
The situation, the report notes, may only get worse in wake of the release of the National Register of Citizens. Since 2015, Assam started updating its citizens’ list known as the National Register of Citizens. The stated aim of the exercise is also to identify all “genuine citizens” living in Assam and root out “illegal immigrants”. A truncated first draft was released on January 1. The partial draft verified that 1.9 crore of the 3.29 crore individuals who applied to be included in the register were citizens of India. A second final list is scheduled to come out to June 30. It is feared that people who find themselves out of the updated list may be put into the same detention centers that house people declared as foreigners by the tribunals.
“The Indian state must therefore formulate and announce a clear long-term policy about how it will treat, and what will be the consequences, of a person being declared a ‘foreigner’,” the report contends. “This is more crucial than ever, because it is possible that the NRC may declare lakhs as foreigners. In such a case, does the state want to detain lakhs of people indefinitely?”
The key changes required are the following:
1. The government planned to set up assistance camps for the aggrieved people. NRC guidelines should be modified as a large number of women and children were facing difficulty in proving their lineage. The National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam should be updated not on “religious lines” and should concern with the identity of Indians only. It would be wrong to call those not included in the NRC as “infiltrators” as the final decision lay with the Foreigners Tribunals. Those not in the draft should get ample opportunity with adequate time to establish their citizenship claim. People who lack knowledge should be provided assistance. Full justice should be meted to all.
2. All illegals identified will be struck off electoral rolls, but can remain in India with work permits, which can be renewed annually, based on behavior. Work permits can be given for those whom Bangladesh identifies as its citizens. The rest should be permanently off the electoral rolls, since they anyway can’t be deported.
3. All illegals staying on should be asked to sign a legal pledge that they will not participate in political, anti-India or religious conversion activities, and any infringement means deportation. If no deportation is possible due to non-cooperation by Bangladesh, they can be detained in fenced colonies as non-citizens with reduced rights.
4. Giving citizenship to Hindu victims of genocide, ethnic cleansing or forced conversion in Pakistan and Bangladesh can easily be made effective by changing the wordings in the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2016, to say that minority communities in our neighborhood will be eligible for fast-track citizenship and/or permanent residency if they face violence, persecution, harassment or intimidation. This neutral definition – instead specifically mentioning only Hindus, Jains, etc. – will pass the test of fairness, and the actual discretion of letting in more Hindus can be exercised at the level of bureaucratic rules, where the presumption of persecution can be more easily upheld in the case of Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians. Those who don’t fall in these categories – like the Rohingyas of Myanmar or Ahmaddiyas in Pakistan – can be put in a special category, where they can be temporarily placed in camps and given basic refugee amenities, but not citizenship. They can be residents with United Nations financial support, and the presumption would be that they will return to Pakistan or Bangladesh or Myanmar once conditions improve. We need a humane, yet strategic law.
5. The only logical and sensible way to proceed in the matter of illegal immigrants is make changes in the law, and get Bangladesh on board to admit that at least some of the illegals are its citizens. It will probably never admit to persecuting Hindus.
Nobody is perfect in the world. Most of the people who made it to the NRC List are lucky and blessed enough to have kept the decades old documents as required for NRC inclusions. But not all five fingers are alike. In the same way many people who are genuine citizens of in the state are not lucky enough to have kept the documents of ancestors which are decades old. Many peoples are illiterate, poor who are hardly earning enough to just survive in this world. Many people are even not so lucky enough to just survive and hardly get one time of food in a day and some even don’t get the same every day.
The claims of those left out in the NRC must be heard carefully, humanely.
We don’t want a single foreigner’s name to be included in the final NRC. But no genuine Indian citizen should be excluded from the list. All genuine Indians must be included in the NRC.
FROM,
AN EXCLUDED PERSON FROM ASSAM NRC
ASHA KANTA SHARMA
ARN 401832202129075500948
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