New Delhi: India will publish on Saturday (tomorrow) a controversial citizens list that advocates say will help rectify decades of unchecked illegal immigration into the northeastern state of Assam. Critics fear it will leave millions of people stateless.
###
The BJP-led government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi backs the project, and has vowed to roll it out nationwide.
###
Some view the National Register of Citizens as an attempt to deport millions of India’s minority Muslim population. But activists who have been fighting for such a list for decades say that it’s simply to protect Assam’s indigenous people, whether Hindu, Muslim or tribal.
###
The draft version of the register released in June left off about 4.1 million of the state’s 32 million residents.
###
Assam security tight
###
Security was tightened in the Indian state of Assam on Friday before the release of a “citizens register”.
###
Authorities in Assam in north-eastern India, for decades a hotbed of inter-religious and ethnic tensions, have brought in 17,000 additional security personnel for the release.
###
Gatherings of groups of people have been banned in certain areas and Assam police tweeted images of officers on patrol. A cyber cell was on the lookout for “rumour” and “hate speech” on social media, authorities said.
###
###
Assam, an isolated state of 33 million, has long seen large influxes from elsewhere including during British colonial rule and around the 1971 war of independence in neighbouring Bangladesh.
###
Pressure for a lasting solution has been growing for decades from those who see themselves as genuine Assamese. Sporadic violence has included the massacre of around 2,000 people in a single day in 1983.
###
Only those who can demonstrate that they or their forebears were in India before 1971 can be included in the NRC, a draft of which in July 2018 excluded around four million people.
###
But this is a huge challenge in a poor region where illiteracy is rife and where many lack documentation.
###
120 days to appeal
###
The roughly two million people who are expected to be left off the final NRC register being published on Saturday will have 120 days to appeal.
###
Those rejected can then be declared foreigners and face being stripped of their Indian citizenship and rights, put in a detention camp and even deported, although it is unclear where.
###
Critics of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led government, which also runs Assam, say the process reflects its aim to serve only its co-religionists.
###
In January the lower house passed legislation that stands to grant citizenship to people who moved to India from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan as recently as six years ago – but not if they are Muslim.
###
###
For those left off the NRC, the final decision on their fate lies with around 100 quasi-judicial Foreigners’ Tribunals, another 200 of which are being set up.
###
But critics say that those staffing them are often unqualified, and that the entire process has been riddled with inconsistencies and errors, prompting complaints from all sides.
###
“We are genuine Indian people. My forefathers were born here in this land,” Saheb Ali, 55, whose name was left off the draft NRC, told AFP in the village of Khutamari.
###
“My mother’s name was included in the voter list of 1966. We have submitted the documents while filing the forms. However, her name is not there in the draft NRC,” said Ali.
###