Don’t refer people covered by CAA to foreigners’ tribunals: Assam govt to cops
Assam’s home and political department said it should advise such people to apply for Indian citizenship rather than send their cases to the foreigners’ tribunal
GUWAHATI: The Assam government has told the state police to stop initiating proceedings against persecuted minorities belonging to Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, Parsi and Christian communities from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan who entered the country before December 31, 2014, and are entitled to Indian citizenship under the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) operationalised on March 11 this year.
In a letter to the state police’s border wing, Assam’s home and political department said it should advise such people to apply for Indian citizenship rather than send their cases to the foreigners’ tribunal.
Under CAA, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Christians, Jains and Parsis from the three countries who entered India on or before December 31, 2014, are eligible for Indian citizenship.
“In view of the above provision of law, the border police may not forward cases of persons belonging to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Parsi, Jain and Christian community who entered India prior to December 31, 2014, directly to foreigners’ tribunals,” the home and political department’s July 5 letter to the border police said.
It said such people should be advised to apply for Indian citizenship and maintain a separate record of such people.
“However, this differential treatment will not be available to the persons who entered Assam from Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Pakistan after December 31, 2014, irrespective of their religion. Once detected, they should be straight away forwarded to the jurisdictional foreigners’ tribunal for further action,” the letter by Partha Pratim Majumdar, secretary, (home and political) to special DGP (Border), Harmeet Singh, said.
Chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma told reporters on Monday that only eight persons in Assam have applied for citizenship under CAA. “And of those eight, only two applicants have pursued their case,” he said.
Foreigners’ tribunals are quasi-judicial bodies exclusive to Assam which adjudicate whether persons whose names are missing from the National Register of Citizens (NRC) for the state or are suspected to be illegal immigrants are Indians or not. There are 100 such tribunals in the state at present.
The border wing of Assam Police is mandated to detect and deport illegal immigrants. They also send cases of people suspected to be illegal immigrants to the foreigners’ tribunals that adjudicate whether a person is an Indian or not based on documents.
Prior to the implementation of CAA, any person, irrespective of their religious affiliation, who entered Assam after March 24, 1971, was deemed an illegal immigrant. Now that deadline has been extended to December 31, 2014, for people from the six specified communities of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.
In NRC, published in August 2019, people who could prove with documents that they or their ancestors were residents of Assam before the March 1971 deadline, were included in the list as Indians. Over 1.9 million people who failed to prove this were excluded.
Assam witnessed violent protests in December 2019 against CAA resulting in five deaths due to police firing. While protests in other parts of India against CAA were about the exclusion of Muslims from its purview, in Assam the opposition was against allowing non-Muslim illegal immigrants to become citizens.
The provisions of CAA were seen by many in the state as going against the tenets of the Assam Accord of 1985 that assured an end to the entry of illegal immigrants irrespective of their religious affiliations. Several groups and indigenous associations felt if CAA is implemented, it could lead to an influx of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and threaten the language, culture and land holdings of local populations.
To be sure, the Supreme Court on July 11 set aside an order by a foreigner’s tribunal, holding that the government could not pick a person at random and demand that they prove their citizenship. A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Ahsanuddin Amanullah said that “in the absence of the basic/primary material, it cannot be left to the untrammelled or arbitrary discretion of the authorities to initiate proceedings” that have life-altering and serious consequences for a person.
The All Assam Students Union (AASU), the state’s most prominent students’ body which spearheaded the anti-CAA protests in December 2019, decried the Assam government’s directive to the border police. “We oppose the government’s move unequivocally and will continue our protests against CAA and its implementation both legally and through democratic protests. CAA is against provisions of Assam Accord and is anti-Assam. We are already pursuing the matter in Supreme Court,” said AASU adviser Samujjal Bhattacharjya.
“The state government’s recent directive is unfortunate, anti-Assam and undemocratic. We had approached the SC against CAA. We don’t know why the Assam government issued the directives when the matter is sub-judice,” Congress leader of opposition in the state assembly, Debabrata Saikia, said.