National Register of Citizens (NRC)
The register is meant to be a list of Indian citizens living in Assam. For decades, the presence of migrants, often called outsiders, has been a contentious issue here. Assam saw waves of migration, first as a colonial province and then as a border state in independent India.
The First National Register of Citizens was compiled in 1951 after the Census was completed that year. The Partition of the subcontinent and communal riots had just triggered vast population exchanges at the border. Since 2015, the state has been in the process of updating the 1951 register.
One of the stated aims of the exercise is to identify so-called “illegal immigrants” in the state, many of whom are believed to have poured into Assam after the Bangladesh War of 1971,
HISTORY
In 1979, about eight years after the war, the state saw an anti-foreigner's agitation. Assamese ethnic nationalists claimed illegal immigrants had entered electoral rolls and were taking away the right of communities defined as indigenous to determine their political future. In 1985, the anti-foreigner's agitation led by the All Assam Students' Union came to an end with the signing of the Assam Accord.
Under this accord, those who entered the state between 1966 and 1971 would be deleted from the electoral rolls and lose their voting rights for 10 years, after which their names would be restored to the rolls. Those who entered on or after March 25, 1971, the eve of the Bangladesh War, would be declared foreigners and deported.
The National Register of Citizens now takes its definition of illegal immigrants from the Assam Accord - anyone who cannot prove that they or their ancestors entered the country before the midnight of March 24, 1971, would be declared a foreigner and face deportation.This means a person could be born in India in 1971 to parents who crossed the border in that year and still be termed an illegal immigrant at the age of 48.
NEED FOR NRC
The mechanism for detecting so-called foreigners had previously been delineated by the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act of 1983. This was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2005, on a petition which argued that the provisions of the law were so stringent, they made the "detection and deportation of illegal migrants almost impossible".
That same year, the decision to start updating the National Register of Citizens was taken at a tripartite meeting attended by the Centre, the Assam Government as well as the All Assam Students' Union and chaired by then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
In 2013, the Supreme Court asked the Centre to finalise the modalities to update the new National Register of Citizens. The project was launched in earnest in 2015, monitored directly by the Supreme Court.
PROCESS OF NRC
The mammoth counting process went through several phases. First, there was data collection. Most individuals applying for inclusion into the NRC had to prove not only that their ancestors had lived in Assam pre-1971 but also their relationship with the ancestor.
Then came the verification process. Documents were sent to the original issuing authorities while NRC officials conducted field verification. Once the data was submitted, the applicant's blood relations were plotted on a family tree.
NRC FINAL STATUS
A total of 3,30,27,661 persons had applied for inclusion of their names in the updated list of NRC Assam. More than 19 lakh people in Assam were excluded from the final list of the NRC that was released by the government on August 31, 2019, while over 3.11 crore persons were included.
As per the guidelines issued by the Central government, the excluded persons can approach one of the 400 foreigners' tribunals and appeal against their exclusions within 120 days of the publication of the final list.
The tribunals are set up by the government to hear the appeals of those who have been excluded from the Assam NRC List. The foreigners' tribunal will also issue certificates to the excluded people and explain to them why they have been left out of the final list of NRC.
Under the provisions of the Foreigners Act, 1946 and Foreigners Tribunal Order, 1964, only the tribunals are empowered to declare a person as a foreigner. Hence, the noninclusion of a person's name in the final list of the NRC does not by itself amount to him/her being declared a foreigner.
NRC AND CITIZENSHIP
Citizenship signifies the relationship between individual and state. It begins and ends with state and law, and is thus about the state, not people. Citizenship is an idea of exclusion as it excludes non-citizens.
There are two well-known principles for the grant of citizenship. While jus soli confers citizenship on the basis of place of birth, jus sanguinis gives recognition to blood ties.
From the time of the Motilal Nehru Committee (1928), the Indian leadership was in favour of the enlightened concept of jus soli. The racial idea of jus sanguis was rejected by the Constituent Assembly as it was against the Indian ethos.
Citizenship is in the Union List under the Constitution and thus under the exclusive jurisdiction of Parliament.
The Constitution does not define the term 'citizen' but gives, in Articles 5 to 11, details of various categories of persons who are entitled to citizenship. Unlike other provisions of the Constitution, which came into being on January 26, 1950, these articles were enforced on November 26, 1949, itself, when the Constitution was adopted.
However, Article 11 itself confers wide powers on Parliament by laying down that "nothing in the foregoing provisions shall derogate from the power of Parliament to make any provision with respect to the acquisition and termination of citizenship and all matters relating to citizenship". Thus Parliament can go against the citizenship provisions of the Constitution.
The Citizenship Act, 1955 was passed and has been amended four times—in 1986, 2003, 2005, and 2015. The Act empowers the government to determine the citizenship of persons in whose case it is in doubt.
However, over the decades, Parliament has narrowed down the wider and universal principles of citizenship based on the fact of birth. Moreover, the Foreigners Act places a heavy burden on the individual to prove that he is not a foreigner.
CITIZENSHIP AMENDMENT BILL
2019 As the Citizenship Act does not differentiate between foreigners on religious lines, the government plans to bring an amendment to the law to make Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, and Christian illegal migrants from Muslim-majority Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan eligible for citizenship of India without detention.
Under the present citizenship law, one of the requirements for citizenship by naturalisation is that the applicant must have resided in India during the last 12 months, as well as for 11 of the previous 14 years. The Amendment relaxes the second requirement from 11 years to 6 years as a specific condition for applicants belonging to these six religions, and the aforementioned three countries.
The Amendment in the Foreigners (Tribunals) Order, 1964, issued by the Central Government on May 30, 2019, empowered district magistrates of all States and Union Territories to set up tribunals to identify foreigners living in India illegally. The process of detaining illegal immigrants will have to be overseen by the local police. The state governments will also be required to build detention centres for illegal immigrants.
PAN INDIA NRC
The government has decided to prepare a National Population Register (NPR) by September 2020 to lay the foundation for rolling out a citizens' register across the country. The NPR will be a list of usual residents of the country.
The NPR is a register of usual residents of the country. It is being prepared at the local (village/sub-town), sub-district, district, state and national level under provisions of the Citizenship Act 1955 and the Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003.
Once the NPR is completed and published, it is expected to be the basis for preparing the National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC), a pan-India version of Assam's National Register of Citizens (NRC).
For the purpose of NPR, a usual resident is defined as a person who has resided in a local area for the past six months or more or a person who intends to reside in that area for the next six months or more.
The main purpose of the NPR is to have an elaborate record or database of every resident in the country. This database comprises both demographic as well as biometric particulars.
Also read: What is NPR
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