An intriguing debate gained momentum soon after the Foreign Ministry made a public statement that a passport alone cannot justify one’s claim to be a citizen of India. The Central Government had already clarified that no Aadhaar, PAN, voter identity card, driving licence, or school certificates can be assumed as solid proof of Indian citizenship. Needless to mention that Indian citizenship is administered by the Citizenship Act, 1955, and passports are issued under the Passports Act, 1967. Citizenship in India is defined by the Constitution and the citizenship laws, which can be acquired by various means like birth, descent, naturalization, registration, or incorporation of territory into the country. A large majority of Indians are citizens by birth and hence they do not ask for citizenship certificates. However, the passport laws also permit the government to grant passports to non-citizens (under specific circumstances), and hence every Indian passport holder may not necessarily be a bona fide citizen of the country. There are speculations and also popular demands that New Delhi should introduce a nationwide screening of citizenship in the coming days to create a particular document for genuine Indian citizens. The exercise must be endorsed by the National Register of Citizens (NRC), but the 1951 NRC is yet to be updated across the country (except in Assam, which too embraced controversies). Recently, the Gauhati High Court, while upholding a 28 February 2019 order of the Foreigners’ Tribunal (Kamrup Metropolitan), declared an Assam resident a foreigner. The individual submitted a number of documents, including his PAN, voter identity card, school certificates, land deals, etc., to prove his citizenship, but those were not acknowledged by the court.
Needless to mention that the NRC updating process in Assam (between 2015 and 2019, following the direction of the Supreme Court of India) mired into chaos, from financial mishandling to the accommodation of illegal migrants as original inhabitants. The disagreement started as soon as the Assam NRC’s final draft was published in 2019, and it was cleverly announced as the final one by some motivated elements. Amazingly, the said list is yet to be certified by the Registrar General of India. Later, the sitting State NRC Coordinator, Hitesh Devsarma, claimed that his predecessor, Prateek Hajela, intentionally bungled the process by tampering with the software with an aim to entertain a large number of illegal migrants (read Bangladeshi Muslim settlers). According to Devsarma, an important verification mechanism (Family Tree Matching) was also compromised by Hajela and his associates. So, he demanded a credible probe into the irregularities and lodged multiple complaints with the concerned authorities. Later, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India also pointed out irregularities to the tune of Rs 260 crore during the NRC updating process. The highest national audit body also recommended legal action against Hajela. Even Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma also admitted that the said NRC was faulty. Stating that Hajela prepared a flawed NRC, Sarma asserted it could jeopardise national security and harm the interests of the indigenous people of Assam.
Lately, a writ petition forwarded by Devsarma, praying for a comprehensive re-verification of the Assam NRC, was accepted by the apex court of India. Participating in a recent debate, hosted by journalist Dikshit Sarma and broadcast by Nation NE, Devsarma reiterated that a genuine review of the Assam NRC will help identify hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants who continue enjoying all government-sponsored welfare benefits. Leaving aside a few exceptions, the Assam media remains shy of reporting the financial malpractices taking place in the process. The majority of local media persons even disseminate misinformation (for reasons best known to them only) that the NRC supplementary list had no need for authentication. One Guwahati-based senior television host shamelessly lobbied for accepting it without verification. Later, he was named and shamed on social media for months as a beneficiary of the NRC updation scam, but the journalist remained silent on those allegations (not having clarified his position till date). The mediocre writer also penned a book praising Hajela for his unparalleled work in NRC updation, probably to push for a national award for the bureaucrat. It’s assumed that a genuine probe would unearth all misdeeds and also identify the guilty individuals who wanted to cheat the nation for their selfish gains during the much-hyped NRC updating exercise in Assam, for due punishment under the law.
