Assam's National Register of Citizens (NRC): What Happened, and What Now
On 31 August, India released the final iteration of the
National Register of Citizens (NRC), a list of “genuine Indian citizens”, the
updation of which was sanctioned by the Supreme Court in 2014 for the state of
Assam. Close to 1.9 million (19 lakh) people were excluded from the final list,
which came after two preliminary drafts. The headcount exercise is part of Assam’s
four-pronged citizenship determination process, the Foreigner Tribunals (FT),
Election Commission’s Doubtful-Voter (D-Voter) tag, and Border Police being the
other three.
Despite the judicial sanction that the NRC received, it has
been received criticism in various quarters for its bureaucratic and procedural
complexities, which have reportedly led to the exclusion of “genuine Indian
citizens.” Assamese-speaking groups, however, have mostly come out in support
of the exercise, arguing that this can put an end to the issue of illegal
immigration into Assam. Yet others, including the BJP-led Assam government, are
unhappy with the final exclusion figure, which is less than earlier estimates
of illegal immigrants. Moreover, there is no clarity on what is to happen in
the follow-up stages, and the future of the excluded individuals.
This discussion explored the various components of the
NRC process as it unfolded and the potential trajectories it could take in the
future. It also engaged with the political, legal, and social aspects of
the NRC exercise and the broader discourses around it.
SPEAKERS
Dr Nandita Saikia is Assistant Professor at the Centre for
the Study of Regional Development, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru
University (JNU). She was previously an Assistant Professor at the Population
Research Centre, Institute of Economic Growth. Dr Saikia got her PhD from the
International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai, following which, she
went to the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Austria, as a
post-doctoral research fellow. She was also a visiting scholar to the Visiting
Scholar to the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Germany, and was
later awarded the Max Planck-India fellowship for collaborative demographic
research. Dr Saikia’s primary research interest is formal demography, or
mathematical and statistical relations between demographic measures.
Anas Tanwir is an advocate at the Supreme Court (SC) of
India, and founder of Indian Civil Liberties Union (ICLU). He has appeared as a
counsel in the ongoing National Register of Citizens (NRC) case. Tanwir began
practicing at the SC in 2012, and has handled more than fifty cases related to
illegal immigrants since then. These include cases related to appeals against
Foreigner Tribunals verdicts during which, he has successfully secured the
release of several detainees. Tanwir has also handled several mob
lynching-related cases at the SC, and was a key member of the team that drafted
a template for anti-mob lynching legislation, which was later used by the
governments of Rajasthan and Manipur to draft their own anti-lynching laws.
Tanwir got his BA LLB degree from Ram Manohar Lohia National Law University
(RMLNLU), Lucknow.
Angshuman Choudhury is a Senior Researcher at the Institute
of Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS) and coordinates its South East Asia
Research Programme (SEARP). His research focuses on the ethnic armed conflict
and peace process in Myanmar, geopolitics of the ASEAN region, citizenship and
ethnic politics in India’s Northeast, and refugee policies. He has written for
various national and international publications, including Asia Times, The
Diplomat, Channel News Asia, Tea Circle Oxford, South Asia Journal, Economic
& Political Weekly, The Hindu, Outlook India, Firstpost, Scroll, and The
Wire, and has been invited to present at conferences and briefings in India and
abroad. Angshuman is an alumnus of the School of Government and International
Affairs at Durham University, UK.