Mass evictions of people living in slums across cities, using force, allegations of harbouring ‘illegal migrants’ have acquired phenomenal pace in the past few months. Calling out certain demographics, like Muslims and those who speak in Bengali, as non-citizens and housing them in ‘holding centres’ has made the exercise acquire a menacing character. The Wire reports on people vital to building city infrastructure, living on the margins, now suddenly finding their citizenship challenged.
New Delhi: “Can you prove that you are a citizen,” is a question that is being routinely asked in India today – in Gurugram, Delhi, Jaipur, Assam, Odisha and elsewhere – especially to Bengali-speaking migrant workers from Muslim communities.
For 58-year-old Rahim Ali who died in 2022, the reply to this question came too late. Ali, a poor agricultural labourer from Assam’s Nalbari, spent the last 18 years of his life trying to find an answer. Ali had spent the last decade of his life without a ration card, access to government schemes, access to healthcare facilities, and other rights that only citizens are entitled to.
Why? Because Ali had been declared an illegal immigrant by a foreigners’ tribunal in Assam. Two years after his death, in 2024, the Supreme Court overturned the tribunal’s ruling and termed its findings as “wholly unsustainable.” But for Ali, this relief had no value.
Ali’s case is not an isolated one. Many lost their citizenship rights for as little as a missing letter in their names or a change in their last names, post-marriage. A new report titled ‘Unmaking Citizens: The Architecture of Rights Violations and Exclusion in India’s Citizenship Trials,’ alleges systemic flaws in the whole process to identify foreigners in Assam.
With analysis of over 1,200 Gauhati high court verdicts, comprehensive breakdown of allegedly unconstitutional functioning by foreigners’ tribunals, interviews from lawyers and affected persons, the report presents a grim picture. It argues that Assam’s tribunals, originally set up to identify undocumented migrants, have evolved into “routine instruments of exclusion,” supported by “legal reasoning that disregards due process and constitutional protections.”
The report, released by the National Law School of India University and Queen Mary University of London, is authored by Mohsin Alam Bhat, Arushi Gupta, and Shardul Gopujkar, with research support from students at NLSIU and members of the Parichay Legal Aid Clinic. Bhatt and his fellow researchers worked on the report for over three years.
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here.