Issues surrounding draft National Register of Citizens(NRC) in Assam

The NRC stands for the National Register of Citizens of India. In 1951 the newly-independent India had its first population census. The data collected in the census were kept with the National Register of Citizens (NRC). The NRC has not been updated since then.

After prolonged litigations, in 2014 the Supreme Court came out with the judgment that the NRC should be updated. Foreigners who came to the state before 25th March 1971 and their progeny can register with the NRC.

Since Independence till 1971, when Bangladesh was created, Assam witnessed large-scale migration from East Pakistan that became Bangladesh after the war. Soon after the war on a treaty for friendship, co-operation and peace was signed between India and Bangladesh. The migration of Bangladeshis into Assam continued.

To bring this regular influx of immigrants to the notice of then government, the All Assam Students Union submitted a memorandum to Indira Gandhi in 1980 seeking her “urgent attention” to the matter. Subsequently, Parliament enacted the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) Act, 1983. This Act, made applicable only to Assam, was expected to identify and deport illegal migrants in the state.

On the other hand, Assam has been recurrently rocked by agitations against infiltrators. The student movement in the 1970s and 1980s was built around ethnic anxieties as it posited an Assamese versus non-Assamese divide. The Assam Movement of the 1980s was the strongest expression of these sentiments. It demanded detection and deportation of foreigners. The Movement wound up with the signing of the Assam Accord in 1985. The Accord mandated that foreigners who entered the state after 24th March 1971 would be identified and deported. In reality, few people got deported.

The objective of the NRC was to arrive at a resolution of questions raised for more than six decades around ethnicity, culture, and religion.

The process of detection of foreigners has been going on for quite some time in Assam. The Illegal Migrants (Detection by Tribunal) Act and Foreigners Tribunals have been the instruments to identify and deport foreigners. The NRC updating is a more ambitious plan in this regard.

At upwards of four million, the number of those excluded from the second draft of the National Register of Citizens published has sparked great anxiety about the legal status of so many individuals.

Draft national register of citizens:-

Issues due to NRC:-

NRC is becoming a dangerous card in the sordid game of political confrontation across the whole of India’s east and Northeast.

Strain in India-Bangladesh relation:-

Biggest fallout of the NRC updating could be India’s relations with Bangladesh, which has been on an upswing since 2009.

Families segregated:-

Names of some family members have been included in the final draft but those of their wives and children are missing. There are so many cases such as those.

Leave aside the harassment and humiliation of having to file claims all over again and chase officials who are often less than sympathetic.

Rising insecurity among people leading to violence :-

Chant of national security and a muscular nationalism could stoke more mistrust and aggravate the climate of uncertainty in the border state.

Incidents of harassment on the charge of being illegal Bangladeshi on flimsy ground, or no ground at all, are making the migrants nervous.

Names Are excluded:-

From the frenetic pace to meet deadlines in the face of an unrelenting apex court to the omission of 1,50,000 names from the 19 million that had made it to the first draft.

The latest list again had its share of notable omissions, including serving and former legislators.

Preparation of NRC subjected to bias :-

Even a skillfully devised system of digitised 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 core of the ‘legacy data’.

The future of illegal migrants is under question :-

Bigger challenges lie ahead, especially after the final NRC list determines the precise number of deemed illegal immigrants.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 doubtful if all indigenous people have their paper in order. For instance, there are doubts that many poor people belonging to nomadic tribal communities would be able to produce documentary evidence that they lived in the state forty seven years ago.

Rising violence :-

India and Bangladesh don’t have an agreement to facilitate deportation of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants to that country. This will render the identified illegal migrants as stateless people.

Dilemma to Supreme court as well :-

If the Supreme Court gives a stamp of approval to the NRC, thereby it is foreclosing any chance of judicial remedy to those who may have been wrongly removed from it.

If the draft NRC shows the actual number of illegal migrants to be far fewer than the fantastically large figures being quoted by some, will the Supreme Court become the focus of controversy as having overseen a flawed process.

If the draft NRC sparks off communal or ethnic tensions, will the Supreme Court accept responsibility.

Way forward :-

Central and State governments must step up their assurances that there is no need for panic.

SC should create an orderly mechanism for those aggrieved by exclusion to exhaust judicial remedies in accordance with law, without prejudicing their rights by prejudging any matter. There still remains the question as to what happens to those who are declared illegal migrants in accordance with the law after all judicial remedies are exhausted.

(Source:Insightsias)