A bleak future for 4 million at risk of statelessness in Assam, India

In late July I wrote a blog about the plight of more than 4 million people in Assam Province, India, who are now at risk of statelessness. The people affected are not on the latest draft of Assam’s National Register of Citizenship (NRC), published on 30 July. Absence from the Assam NRC means that they are not confirmed as citizens of India.

Another – further refined and updated – draft is planned for December 2018. In the meantime, forms are available until the end of September to appeal a decision not to include an individual on the Assam NRC ¹.

There are many warnings about the effect of this exercise on long-term residents of Assam unable to evidence their Indian citizenship and their right to be on the register.  In this blog I want to look at the situation post-30 July and what the fate of those 4 million is likely to be, going forward.

 

Brief background to the Assam NRC

My previous blog gives more detail about the demographic make-up of Assam. It looked at how so many people came to find themselves off the register. In brief, the situation has come about because Assam decided to update the original register compiled in 1951. For individuals to keep their names on the updated register, their names have to appear either in the 1951 register, or in any pre-1971 electoral roll documents. If this is not the case, individuals can produce admissible documents to establish their link with those having their names in the primary set of documents.

The new Assam NRC was updated once in December 2017 and again in July 2018. One of the aims of the updated register is to limit the impact of population exchanges, especially between India and Bangladesh, to those that occurred before 1971. In effect, by updating the register, India is saying that anyone who came into a much-shrunk post-partition Assam after 1971 should have remained in East Pakistan. East Pakistan gained its independence to become Bangladesh the following year. Anyone that come to India after 1971 can be treated as a foreigner and stripped of citizenship and participatory rights in their home region.

 

The good and the bad – the numbers are down, but are still too high

In good news, with each iteration of the Assam NRC, fewer and fewer people find themselves excluded from the register. That means that fewer and fewer people are at risk of statelessness. In the first draft of December 2017, 14 million people found themselves excluded from the register. By the July 30 draft, this number was down to 4 million. If one is being optimistic, perhaps very few people will be left off the register by its next iteration, due in December 2018.

But at present what can be said is that 4 million individuals are at risk of statelessness. This is unacceptable.

 

The ugly – bias in the register

Media reports following the 30 July NRC suggest that, although the update to the Assam NRC is supported and sanctioned by India’s Supreme Court, document and eligibility checks are done at local level, and with local prejudices. Local officials rejecting documents because they “look fake”, or individuals who have already been declared once as being Indian citizens having to go through the process again ² are some of the worrying examples.

Those excluded from the register can appeal. But that is of limited use if, following an appeal, and individual is determined ineligible to be on the register. Without a thought-out policy on what should happen to those who lose their appeal, such a process offers hardly any protection at all ³.

Furthermore, the appeal process does not deal with another bias: the updates to the Register are having a disproportionate effect on Assam’s Muslim population. That the key stages of eligibility to be on the register tie in with migration from East Pakistan and the creation of Bangladesh is one indicator. Another indicator, that goes beyond Assam’s approach to managing its population demographics, is the federal 2016 Amendment Citizenship Bill. The Bill specifically seeks to amend the 1995 Citizenship Act. The amendment allows persecuted minorities to gain Indian citizenship after a mere six years of residency in India. Many minorities are listed, but Muslim minorities which are known to face discrimination in Pakistan, such as Shias and Ahmadiyas are not.

 

No ‘coercive action’ is not effective protection

So, what does it mean for an individual to find themselves excluded from the register? And what will the future hold for them?

Let’s start with the official line. The Home Minister has confirmed publicly that no ‘coercive’ action will be taken against anyone excluded from the register ⁴.  That is fine, but for the evidence that new detention camps have been authorised ⁵ and may end up being used for those unable to prove Indian citizenship by appearing on the register.

Furthermore, ‘coercive’ action is not the totality of the negative experience of being at risk of statelessness. The fact that, officially at least, anyone excluded from the register will not be detained ⁶ is only one potential issue. With no official policy ⁷ on what happens to those who never make it on the register, the likely outcome is that they will be subject to The Foreigner’s Act of 1946 ⁸. The Act gives wide discretionary powers to the state. Despite the promise of ‘no coercive action’, those powers do include detention and deportation.

 

Back to Bangladesh?

If the aim of the Assam NRC is to target ‘illegal immigrants’ from Bangladesh, perhaps one preferred outcome for the government of Assam is for individuals to consider ‘returning’ there (even if they have never lived in Bangladesh and were born in India). But is this even feasible? The answer is: not very. For a start, India does not have a bilateral agreement with Bangladesh to deal with illegal immigration. Nor does Bangladesh recognise that there may even be a migration problem ⁹. Bangladesh is, therefore, unlikely to accept someone who has lived long-term (or always) in Assam as one of its nationals.  The upshot is that Muslim inhabitants of Assam excluded from the register will not be considered citizens of India. Nor can they cross over the border to Bangladesh to be accepted as citizens there. They will have nowhere to go and will not be protected by either state.

 

A bleak future

To recap: up to 4 million individuals are currently excluded from the Assam NRC. It is difficult to predict how many will be excluded from the register following the latest iteration, to be published in December 2018. A disproportionally large number are likely to be Muslim residents of Assam. Those individuals will be illegal immigrants rather than Indian citizens.

With nowhere to go, and with no recognition from either India or neighbouring Bangladesh, those excluded from the register will be at risk of statelessness. Despite the assurances made in the media, it is hard to believe that an individual who is not on the Assam NRC will have the same level of protection that India offers to its citizens.

And it is hard to believe that those who are risk of statelessness in Assam will not be worse off in a country that is currently building more detention camps and still has not signed up to the two statelessness Conventions ¹⁰.

The Assam government should ensure that only the bare minimum (and correct number) of individuals are excluded from the register come December 2018. And it should have a coherent and humane policy to deal with those individuals.