So far, at least in ‘mainland’ India, we have been relatively
insulated from the tortures and traumas caused by public authorities
demanding proof of whether or not we are Indian. In the far corners of
Assam, however, turmoil and anguish reign. Some of our most economically
weak people have been ground down to desperation as a peculiarly
callous and even motivated bureaucracy rules over their fate.
According
to a meticulous list compiled by Citizens for Justice and Peace in
Assam, there have been 58 citizenship related deaths as of July 18,
2019. Almost all of them hail from working class agrarian or urban
backgrounds. Of these 28 are Hindus, 27 Muslims, one Boro, one Gorkha
and one is a member of the Tea Tribes. The numbers of those dead have so
far not touched us in the rest of India. However, when 40 lakh plus of
Indians were excluded from the provisional National Register of Citizens
last July, a sense of the magnitude began to percolate through.
The
NRC, a process both complex to understand and unique to Assam, was a
consensual process arrived at after the tumultuous years that preceded
the Assam Accord, when aggression, strife and violence marred a politics
that was driven by real or imagined fears of the outsider. The
discourse has been twisted cleverly to now mean ‘foreigner’ and
‘infiltrator’. So it is these peculiar and seemingly parochial
preconditions that have to be factored in to understand how and why a
wide consensus developed around the process of a ‘free and fair’ NRC.
Terms like ‘genuine Indian citizens’ have now emerged to form an
integral part of the wider humanitarian discourse within the state.
Legally,
the NRC in Assam is today being finalized under the Citizenship Act,
1955, which applies to all Indians (with a special amendment that
relates to Assam) and under the special provisions of the Citizenship
Amendment Rules, 2003.
The ‘Modalities of NRC’ — under which this process has to be
undertaken — are thorough. These Modalities (2003 onwards) were prepared
on the basis of a common consensus arrived at with all stakeholders in
the state. These included the supporters of the Assam Movement, various
religious and linguistic minority organizations, and all the political
parties of Assam. It was truly a hard earned consensus.
Thereafter,
these Modalities were approved by a cabinet sub-committee of the
government of Assam and then sent to the NRC authority. After the
approval from the NRC authority, these were sent to the registrar
general of India under the department of home, government of India.
Understanding these Modalities is to judge whether today’s process is
fair. After elaborate discussions, the Modalities approved as many as 15
kinds of documents as legacy documents and another 10 sorts of
documents known as ‘linkage documents’, which could and must be used
during evaluating the applications of genuine Indian citizens for
inclusion of their names in the updated NRC. All these documents were
approved by the RGI and subsequently by the Supreme Court of India. It
was on the basis of any or all of these documents that the process was
to be finalized.
However, perversions and manipulations have
dogged the process of late. After 2016, the acceptability of some of the
documents which were initially approved in the Modalities (for
finalization of the NRC-Assam) were ‘diminished’, owing to the damaging
intentions of various authorities. When these were brought to the
attention of the court, some of these were rectified. However, at the
ground level, in spite of this disapproval by the court that is
monitoring this mammoth process, the NRC authority continues with its
questionable task of diminishing the acceptability of some of the
‘Legacy’ and ‘Linkage’ documents. The motive appears to be not just to
harass the common citizen but to perform to a ‘target’ set by political
bosses.
To elaborate, the NRC authority has ‘diminished’ the
acceptability of the citizenship certificate, migration certificate,
refugee inmate certificate. Besides, all government documents including
the voters list issued from Bengal and Tripura have been rejected. All
this has happened during the ongoing process of the finalization of the
NRC. All birth certificates issued by the Nagaland government authority
have been rejected without the minimum steps or any initiative to prove
the documents’ authenticity being taken.
Further, within the NRC
Modalities, there was a strong provision — well thought out — whereby an
arrangement was put in place for a district magistrate investigation
team to intervene. This provision ensured and assured any Indian citizen
of a forum he or she could approach on the question. If, for instance, a
genuine Indian citizen failed to submit proper documents, these could
be investigated independently by the DMIT. The team was empowered to
meet local people, and after proper investigation, had the power to
approve the inclusion of a name of an orphan, destitute or a person
having no documents, especially the ‘linkage’ documents. This entire
provision has been ignored, dropped from the on-going process.
Finally,
there was a last, strong, fall-back provision, also within the
Modalities, that laid down the DNA test as an ultimate arbiter for the
finalization of a claim for the inclusion of a name while updating the
NRC (when all else failed). The provision was also struck down by the
office of the RGI unilaterally. The highest court in the land has not
been kept fully apprised of these deletions.
There is more. During
the course of this finalization process, large numbers of applications
have been rejected because of minor discrepancies in the names, titles,
age differences in the legacy documents and the user of such legacy
documents. This in spite of the fact that ‘Modalities of NRC’ state
otherwise: that minor discrepancies of the names, ages, titles will not
affect the legitimate demand for inclusion of a name in the updated NRC.
However, on the ground, at the 1,200 plus Nagrik Seva Kendras, this
specific assurance is being given the go-by, causing injustice and mass
exclusions.
There is no section of the population in Assam that
has been left unaffected by this overpowering, State-created tragedy.
Bengali-speaking Hindus, Muslims, the Gorkhas, Hindi-speaking people of
north and west India have all been caught up in this, equally. There is
no way to describe what this unfolding trauma has meant, for women and
men to attend hearings scheduled in places far away from home, spending
significant amounts of money filling in applications. Worse, they are
summoned to appear not once, but repeatedly, along with ‘legacy
persons’.
This means that, in some cases, many people have even
had to attend hearings as many as seven to 14 times along with their
entire troupe of family tree members. This means a batch of 40-80
persons from an extended family having to travel up to hundreds of
kilometres from their place of residence. Not too far back, a professor
from a prominent university of Delhi had to rush three times from Delhi
to Lakhimpur in Upper Assam — which is about 3,000 kilometres — along
with all his family members .
What is the legal recourse for
persons unfairly or otherwise left out of the final NRC? The courts? An
executive order of the ministry of home affairs (May 2019), now under
challenge in the court, tries to diminish due process and an Indian
citizen’s right to citizenship by compelling those excluded from the NRC
to approach Foreigners Tribunals. What are these bodies? Created
specially in Assam under the pre-Independence Act of 1946, they are
non-transparent bodies, about 100 in number. Fair adjudication of
citizenship under the 1955 Citizenship Act needs to be undertaken under
the Citizenship Tribunals constituted under that law. Confusions abound
as injustice persists.
The Telegraph, With inputs from Nandu Ghosh, Bijni and Zamser Ali.
Teesta Setalvad is secretary of Citizens for Justice and Peace
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