It has been a year since Assam published its updated National Register of Citizens, meant to be a list of Indian citizens living in the sta...
It has been a year since Assam published its updated National Register of Citizens, meant to be a list of Indian citizens living in the state. The final list left out about 19 lakh applicants. This vast number, now left in limbo about their status as citizens, are yet to receive formal rejection notices known as “speaking orders”.
Without a formal notice, they cannot appeal against their exclusion at the foreigners tribunals – quasi-judicial bodies that adjudicate on matters of nationality in Assam.
Officials in Assam say it is unlikely these memos will be issued anytime soon. “Everything is on hold at the moment because all officials are engaged in Covid-19 duty,” said Hitesh Dev Sarma, state coordinator for the National Register of Citizens. “So, the status [of the exercise] is the same as it was before the pandemic began.”
The scramble for the NRC
Assam’s National Register of Citizens was first created in 1951. Tied to the Census conducted that year, it was meant to count the Indian citizens who had remained or arrived in Assam after the great population exchanges of Partition.
The recent exercise to update the NRC was to be a means to sort Indian citizens from undocumented migrants, believed to be mostly from Bangladesh. According to the...
