This is a longer version of the op-ed article in The Hindu that appeared on July 17, 2019: https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/the-many-hurdles-in-proving-citizenship/article28493185.ece?homepage=true
Floods are an annual event in Assam. Thousands
of families lose their lands, their cattle and their homes, as relentless rains
submerge vast tracts.
This year, along with the floods, another
humanitarian crisis awaits the state. The date is already set. It is July 31.
On that day, the final list of the National
Register of Citizens (NRC) will be released, the culmination of a fraught
process conducted since 2015 at the urging of the Supreme Court, and monitored
by it.
While reports of the many anomalies that
dog the process of determining citizenship, including the constantly changing
list of documents that are, or are not, accepted, the sheer enormity of the
human crisis facing the state has yet to register in the rest of India.
Numbers alone do not indicate this. What is known today is that out of a
population of 31.1 million (2011 census), projected to be around 33 million
today, 32.9 million have applied to the NRC to be listed as a
"genuine" Indian citizen. Of
these roughly 29 million have been accepted.
It is the future of the over four million excluded
from the NRC so far, a number that might reduce when the final list is
published on July 31, that provides the foundation for the impending human
crisis awaiting Assam.
Even if half of this number is excluded, in
that these people cannot establish their credentials as Indian citizens, we are
looking at the future for two million stateless people.
What will happen to me and my family after
July 31? That is the question that haunts thousands of men and women. The
anxiety in their strained faces is haunting. Hundreds of individuals, clutching
frayed plastic bags containing documents, will wait hours in inclement weather
to meet anyone willing to listen, and answer this one question.
After travelling to three districts in
Assam at the end of June, the full dimension of this humanitarian crisis hits
you.
The majority of the people left out of the
NRC so far are abjectly poor; many are unlettered. They cannot understand the legal
complications of the process; nor do they have the money to hire legal help. As a result, literally thousands stand in
danger of being declared "foreigners" even though they could be
"genuine" Indian citizens.
The people affected by this process of verification
of citizenship fall into three different categories. One is those who were
marked "D", or doubtful voter when the electoral rolls were revised
in 1997. Their names are excluded from
the NRC unless they can establish their credentials before a Foreigner's
Tribunal.
There are currently fewer than one hundred
such tribunals in Assam. The opacity that surrounds the way decisions are made in
these quasi-judicial courtrooms is a separate story.
The second category is people picked up by
police on suspicion of being illegal immigrants. The border police, represented in every police
station, finger prints them, and then informs them in writing that they must
appear before a Foreigner's Tribunal to prove they are Indian. Most such cases
are of poor, daily wage workers who are unable to assemble the relevant
documents.
The third is of those who have registered
with the NRC, but have been excluded because there was a discrepancy in the
documents they submitted. One list of exclusions with four million names was
published last year; another on June 26 this year with 102,462 names. Many of
those on the excluded lists have filed additional documents in the NRC centres.
Their fate will be known on July 31.
In addition, there are people who have
already been declared "foreigners" by the tribunals. In February 2019, the government
informed the Supreme Court that of the 938 people in six detention centres,
823 had been declared foreigners. How long will they be held? Can they be
deported? To which country? These questions remain unanswered.
In this haze of numbers and judicial
processes, the real and tragic stories of individuals often go unheard and
unheeded.
Take Anjali Das, a 50-year old woman who we
meet in Bijni, Chirang district. She is
one of four women sitting in a small room full of men, waiting patiently for their
turn to present their cases to a group of lawyers. The meeting has been organised by a local
group, Bharatiya Nagorik Adhikar Surakshya Mancha.
Dressed in a rust coloured saree, Anjali cannot
hide her anxiety behind a weak smile. Her maternal home is in Jalpaiguri, West
Bengal, where her father and brother still live. Anjali came to Assam in 1982 when she
married.
She has no birth certificate, like so many
people in India. She does have a school certificate that states she was a
student up to class five and gives her date of birth as June 1, 1969. She also has a certificate from the
panchayat, and her father's Aadhar card as proof that she is Indian. But this
will not suffice. Anjali's name has been
excluded from the NRC, the only one in her marital home. And she cannot
understand why this happened.
Anjali Das is only one of thousands of
married women who have been left out of the NRC for similar reasons. Although
disaggregated data is not yet available, it is estimated that more than half of
those excluded from the NRC are women like her.
Then there are women who are struggling to
understand why some members of their families have been excluded. In Hanchara
village in Morigaon district, Jamina Khatun arrives with the ubiquitous plastic
bag full of documents. She pulls out a photocopy of the June 26 list of names
excluded from the NRC. The list has the names of her husband, her two sons, and
her 11- year-old granddaughter.
The latter's name is likely there because
Jamina's son, Nur Jamal Ali, was referred to the Foreigner's Tribunal based on
a complaint by the man from whom he rented a room in Jorhat. He was working there as a construction
worker. The complaint led to Nur Jamal
being finger printed by the border police, sent a notice to appear before a
Foreigner's tribunal, and then declared a foreigner. As a result, his only
daughter is also excluded from the NRC.
Multiply Anjali and Jamina's stories a
thousand times over and you get a picture of the scale of the crisis in the
lives of tens of thousands of poor people in Assam. Men and women of all ages,
travelling long distances with plastic bags bulging with any and all documents
they can gather, swamp anyone who extends help, by way of legal counseling for
instance.
After July 31, the focus will shift to the
Foreigner's Tribunals. The state government plans to set up 200 by the end of
this month and eventually one thousand, as all those excluded from the NRC will
have to present themselves before these tribunals.
Only the litigants and their lawyers know
what happens within the four walls of these tribunals as neither the public nor
the media are permitted.
To try and visualize what happens in these
quasi courtrooms, this writer tried to get a peek into one in Guwahati.
Foreigner's
Tribunal Court Room 3, Kamrup Metro district, Guwahati, is located in a
residential colony on the ground floor of one of the buildings. Above are flats
that are occupied, evident from the washing hanging out.
The
room is small. It is arranged like a courtroom. A white railing separates the podium on which
the tribunal member sits from the litigants. The railing becomes a small
witness stand at one end.
The
tribunal member has the help of an assistant who sits on the side. His job, one
such assistant tells me, is to check documents. On the high desk there is also
a computer screen and a printer.
According
to the assistant, who does not give his name, cases are heard on simultaneous
days, stretching out to five days.
An
elderly man, a lawyer, who walks in, has a different story. He looks at the top of his brown folder. The
case he has come for began in March. It is now July and it is still being
heard.
The
assistant also confirms that I can only sit in for the hearings if I get
permission from the secretariat. So far,
no journalist has been granted such permission.
The only way to gain access is by subterfuge.
This
then is the other problem. People travel long distances to appear before the
tribunals. Their cases stretch out over months. This means spending money for
travel and stay, apart from lawyers’ fees.
For those living in poverty, this is unaffordable.
Men
like Nurzamal from Pathari Namargaon, South Salamara Mankachar district. He
stands outside the tribunal building waiting for a lawyer. Like Jamina Khatun's son, the border police
in Guwahati picked up Nurzamal where he was employed as a construction worker.
He was finger printed and then sent a notice to appear before the Foreigner's
Tribunal in Guwahati.
Nurzamal's
home is around 270 km away from Guwahati. He has already made five trips from
his home and does no know how many more. If he gives up, or cannot afford to
make the journey, his case will be decided "ex parte".
Literally
thousands of cases are being judged "ex parte". In a statement in the
Lok Sabha on July 2, the
Minister of State for Home Affairs, G. Kishan Reddy acknowledged that from 1985
to February 2019, 63,959 people had been declared foreigners in ex parte
rulings.
An illustration of the arbitrariness
surrounding this process comes from a case in the Supreme Court for which notices
were served on July 3 to the central government and Assam government. In
this case, Hazizul Hoque was sent to a detention camp on March 24, 2017 after
being declared a foreigner ex parte by a tribunal. The only reason this
happened is because Hoque, who suffers lower limb paralysis, could not attend
the hearings. Even his appeal to the
Gauhati High Court was dismissed.
There are already many more stories like
Hoque's. Unfortunately, the majority
cannot go even to the High Court to appeal leave alone the Supreme Court.
The citizenship issue in Assam is layered
and complex. It is not easy for people
outside the state to understand all the multiple threads.
What is clear though is that the brunt of
the systemic problems of establishing citizenship in this manner, and in such
haste, is being borne disproportionately by the poorest.
