INDIA said yesterday people whose names are not included in the final list of citizens residing in Assam will not automatically be declared foreigners and they will not be detained. It was feared that Muslims will be targeted under the guise of detecting illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
Federal Home Minister Rajnath Singh said in a statement that any person who is not satisfied with the outcome of claims and objections can appeal in the Foreigner’s Tribunal. For an update of the NRC (National Register of Citizens) to be made public on July 30, all residents of Assam in the northeast have had to show documents proving they or their families lived in the country before March 24, 1971, to be recognised as Indian citizens.
The exercise has created panic among many Muslims in Assam because Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party which came to power in the state for the first time in 2016 vowed during the election campaign to act against illegal Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh. Rights activists say the drive is also targeting Muslims who are Indian citizens, a charge the government denies. The migrants include many Hindus, but Modi’s government has said they can apply for Indian citizenship.
So, two things stand out here — the readiness of the current Indian government to target Muslims as only Hindus will have the option to apply for Indian citizenship. Secondly Pakistani Muslims apparently started going to Assam from 1951, so even the discriminatory cut-off date of March 24 1971 will include many such citizens.
Muslims make up almost 35 percent of the Assamese population. So removal of Muslims would stand to directly benefit the BJP. It’s not as if Assam doesn’t have enough land — it has more than half of Bangladesh’s land area while hosting roughly one sixth of our population. So the idea that migrants are bad for the economy or for Assam is economically contradicted.
The entire exercise has been done targeting the Assamese electorate to vote for the BJP.
