The NRC process in Assam
This article aims to understand the chronology of various events which culminated in the controversial final NRC list. It has certainly created a spark in the minds of many Indians after 31st December 2017.
What is the NRC?
National Register of Citizens commonly known as NRC has been implemented only in the state of Assam because of it’s prolonged history and problems related to illegal immigrants.
Assam, the North Eastern state of India has become the first state in the country where the NRC is being updated to include the names of those persons whose names appeared in the NRC of 1951 and are still alive; and/or their presently living descendants who have a permanent residence within the state.
The History Of NRC
During the 19th and 20th centuries, Colonial Assam (1826–1947) witnessed intermittent migration of populace from rest of the provinces of British India in the aftermath of the Yandabo treaty (signed on 24 February 1826) which brought the region under the control of British. The liberal colonial authorities encouraged the migration of peasants from Bengal to Assam in search of fertile lands.
As early as 1931, C.S. Mullan, the Census Superintendent in his census report stated:
Probably the most important event in the province during the last 25 years- an event, moreover, which seems likely to alter permanently the whole feature of Assam and to destroy the whole structure of Assamese culture and civilization has been the invasion of a vast horde of land-hungry immigrant, mostly Muslims, from the districts of East Bengal.
The Excerpts from the White Paper on Foreigners’ issue published by the Home and Political Department, Government Of Assam on 20 October 2012 — Chapter-1, Historical Perspective, section 1.2 reads:
Following Partition and communal riots in the subcontinent, Assam initially saw an influx of refugees and other migrants from East Pakistan. The number of such migrants other than refugees was initially reported by the State Government to be between 1,50,000 and 2,00,000 but later estimated to be around 5,00,000.
The ’50s and ‘60s
The Government of India already had in its stock of statutes, the Immigrants (Expulsion from Assam) Act, 1950. This act came into effect from 1 March 1950 which mandated expulsion of illegal immigrants from the state of Assam.
Hence for the first time to identify illegal immigrants, the NRC was prepared for the first time in Assam as part of the 1951 Census which contained the names of 80 lakh citizens of Assam. It was carried out under a directive of the Ministry of Home Affairs. However, the issue of illegal infiltration remained and was slowly becoming a formidable problem in the state of Assam as the migrants enjoyed political patronage. The Registrar General of Census in his report on 1961 Census assessed 2,20,691 infiltrators to have entered Assam.
In 1965, the Govt. of India came up with an initiative with the Govt. of Assam to expedite completion of the National Register of Citizens and to issue National Identity Cards. On this basis, Indian citizens would be registered which would then help towards the identification of illegal immigrants. But the negligence of Central Govt. of India continued towards Assam and dropped the proposal to issue identity cards in consultation with the Govt. of Assam, giving a mere excuse that the project is impracticable.
The Assam Movement
Fresh influx started again in the state of Assam due to riot, war and political Instability in East Pakistan. The issue of illegal immigrants gained more momentum after the formation of Bangladesh in the year 1971.
The continuing influx of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh to Assam led to a formation of a group student leaders in 1979 which came out in fierce protest demanding detention, disenfranchisement and deportation of illegal immigrants from Assam. The students cited that there was a huge surge of electors in the voter lists for the assembly constituencies in certain pockets of the state.
These protests gained huge momentum and support from the people of Assam which finally developed into a mass movement which came to be known as Assam Agitation or Assam Movement led by All Assam Students’ Union(AASU) and All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad(AAGSP). This movement started in 1979 and ended in 1985.
AASU submitted the first memorandum demanding updating of NRC to Centre on January 18, 1980. A huge Massacre at Nellie in Central Assam in the year 1983 which claimed the lives of over 3000 people. The movement culminated in the signing of a landmark Memorandum of Settlement (MoS)-
The Assam Accord which was signed by the Centre, the state, AASU and AAGSP in the presence of then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi on the midnight of August 14. It stated, among other clauses, that foreigners who came to Assam on or after March 25, 1971(the formation of Bangladesh) shall be expelled.
The Accord ended the agitation but could not end the illegal migration. The Assam Accord also envisaged letting foreigners who arrived before January 1, 1966, stay and doing the same for those who arrived between January 1, 1966, and March 24, 1971, after a gap of ten years from the date of their detection. The latter condition may be waived so that the entire focus could be on Bangladeshi immigrants who came to India from March 25, 1971, onward.
Pilot Project 2010
The process of detecting and expelling immigrants suffered from problems for a considerable amount of time. The first attempt of systematically detecting foreigners by updating the NRC in Assam was through a Pilot Project which was started in 2 circles, one in Kamrup district and another in Barpeta district in the year 2010, which had to be aborted within 4 weeks amidst a huge law and order problem involving a mob attack on the Office of the IAS Commissioner, Barpeta that resulted in police firing killing 4 persons. Since then NRC update was considered almost am impossible task by the government agencies. In the year of 2009 Assam Public Works(APW), an NGO filed a case in Supreme Court praying for deletion of foreigners’ name in the electoral rolls and updating of NRC.
The Role Of Supreme Court
However, the task was finally taken up at the behest of the Supreme Court of India’s order in the year 2013 in regards to the petitions of APW, headed by the bench of Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Rohinton Fail Nariman, mandated the Union Government and the State Government to complete the updation of NRC, under the Citizenship Act, 1955 and Citizenship Rules, 2003, in all parts of Assam.
Since then, the Supreme Court of India has been closely monitoring the process and holding a regular hearing on representations made to it by various interested parties and stakeholders. To make the process of NRC update smooth, the Supreme Court in its order dated 21 July 2015 passed the following directions:
We expect all authorities to act faithfully and diligently to carry out their assigned tasks to ensure smooth preparation of NRC and publication thereof within the schedule fixed by us. This is in reiteration of the mandate contained in Article 144 of the Constitution of India. It is not necessary for us to emphasize that any person found to be creating any obstruction or hindrance, in any manner, in the preparation of the NRC would be subjected to such orders as this Court would pass in such eventualities.
Eligibility Criteria for One’s name to be included in the NRC Final List
1. Persons whose names appear in the NRC, 1951
2. Persons whose names appear in any of the Electoral Rolls up to 24 March (midnight), 1971.
3.Descendants of the above persons.
4. Persons who came to Assam on or after 1 January 1966 but before 25 March 1971 and registered themselves under the rules made by the Central Government with the Foreigners Registration Regional Officer (FRRO) and who have not been declared as illegal migrants or foreigners by the competent authority.
5. People who are original inhabitants of Assam and their children and descendants who are citizens of India provided their citizenship is ascertained beyond a reasonable doubt by the registering authority.
6. Persons who can provide any one of the documents issued up to midnight of 24 March 1971 as mentioned in the list of documents admissible for citizenship.
7. All Indian Citizens including their children and descendants who have moved to Assam post 24 March 1971 would be eligible for inclusion in the updated NRC on adducing satisfactory proof of residence in any part of the country (outside Assam) as on 24 March 1971.
Publication of Final NRC
On December 31 midnight 2017, the first draft Of NRC published since NRC of 1951, which contained names of 1.9 crores of the total of 3.29 crore applicants. Right after that, again verification process started for those whose name did not appear in the first list. It continued for 6 more months which led to the publication of another draft of NRC on July 30, 2018, which excluded another 40 lakhs out of 2.9 crore people. The verification process further continued and another Publication of Additional Draft Exclusion List of 1,02,462 was released on July 26.
The Final NRC has been published on 31 August 2019 after completion of all the statutory works as per various standard operating procedures. As per a press release by the SCNRC, a total of 3,30,27,661 persons applied to the registering authority through 68,37,660 application forms and out of which 3,11,21,004 persons were found eligible for inclusion of their names in the final NRC leaving out 19,06,657 persons, who were not included and shall have to approach a Foreigners’ Tribunal with an appeal against non-inclusion if they so desire.
Controversy and Flaws in the process of NRC in Assam
As soon as the final NRC was published, it led to a surge in huge protest and movement in the whole of Assam as controversy regarding its correctness set in and even some lawmakers openly came out criticizing the document.
The day after the final draft of the NRC was released, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee went berserk declaring it a product of “vote bank and divide and rule policy” of the BJP and even stated that the govt. of Bengal will accept all those in the state of Bengal whose names were excluded in the final list.
A sitting MLA of Assam belonging to the political party All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) representing the Scheduled Caste-reserved constituency of Abhayapuri South in lower Assam, having found himself out of the NRC, reportedly expressed that thousands of genuine Indians, especially Bengali Hindus, have been left out of final NRC, and as many illegal foreigners have made into the final list.
The APW, the original petitioner in the Supreme Court, said the final NRC turned out to be a flawed document because its prayer for re-verification of the draft list was rejected by the apex court. The NGO also wondered whether the software used in the update exercise was capable of handling so much data.
So have 1.9 million people effectively become stateless?
Not quite. Residents excluded from the list can appeal to the specially formed courts called Foreigners Tribunals, as well as the high court and Supreme Court.
However, a potentially long and exhaustive appeals process will mean that India’s already overburdened courts will be further clogged, and poor people left off the list will struggle to raise money to fight their cases. If people lose their appeals in higher courts, they could be detained indefinitely. But the workings of the specially formed Foreigners Tribunals, which have been hearing the contested cases, have been mired in controversy. The courts have been accused of bias and their workings have often been opaque and riddled with inconsistencies. Many say the list has nothing to do with religion, but activists see it as targeting the state’s Bengali community, a large portion of whom are Muslims. The above situation can be compared to the plight of Rohingya Muslims in neighbouring Bangladesh.
Can NRC be implemented on the whole of India?
The rise in the number of illegal immigrants is seen in many other states of India. It’s not just subjected to only Assam. So what can be a solution to this common problem?
On 20th November 2019 Home Minister of India, Amit Shah stated that the NRC law will apply to entire India.
The reality, however, paints an entirely different picture. The exact amount of money which is spent in the entire process of NRC in Assam is not in any record, but it is expected to be around Rs 1,200 crore. This is the amount of spend which has been for the process of NRC in Assam whose population around 3 crores. It’s very much easy for all of us to calculate the amount of money which will be needed to implement NRC in India whose population more than 135 crores. This same money can be invested in different burning issues of the country and also for the development process.
Next, it took around 35 years to implement the NRC in Assam and around 40,000 government employees and 8,000 + other contractual workers. Just imagine the amount of time and the number of workers which will be needed for the NRC in India!
The practical implementation of NRC for the entire country of India will always remain a dream and it can never be the only solution to control the rise in the number of Illegal immigrants.
