Supreme Court issues notice to Centre, poll panel on PIL to update Tripura NRC

The problem of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh is serious in Tripura as it has an unprotected porous border and is surrounded on three sides by Bangladesh, a PIL said.

The Supreme Court on Monday issued notice to the Centre and the Election Commission on a PIL seeking to update the national register of citizens (NRC) for Tripura — on the lines of the NRC in Assam — to stop the influx of illegal migrants from Bangladesh.

A view of the Supreme Court in New Delhi.(AP File Photo)

A bench led by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, while issuing the notice, tagged the PIL filed by a non-government organization with a batch of petitions relating to the Assam matter, which is pending before another bench led by the CJI himself.

The Dopha Yoksama Bodol, an indigenous people’s organization of Tripura, contended in the PIL that unchecked entry of illegal migrants has “severely changed the demographic structure of the state under which the original aboriginal Tripura people are reduced to minority (now only 31%) by the outsiders.”

The petitioner said it had made several representations to the Centre on the issue over the past several decades but received no response. Citing the 2011 census, it claimed that only 11,66,813 of the state’s over 3.6 million people were indigenous Tripura residents. The remainder of the population comprised migrants from other states as well as Bangladesh. The petition has not cited how many illegal migrants from Bangladesh have entered the state till date.

The problem of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh is serious in Tripura as it has an unprotected porous border and is surrounded on three sides by Bangladesh, the petition said. It wondered whether the Centre could adopt a policy of pick-and-choose since it has taken steps to update the NRC in Assam.