Assam citizen 2nd list today

The stage is set for the release of the second and final list of Indian citizens living in the state. But that also has nearly 1.5 crore people are on tenterhooks, lest their names are omitted in the state’s National Register of Citizens (NRC).

Detractors seen the registry update as a pretext to target Assam's Muslim population on the suspicion that they are Bangladeshi migrants.

Of the 3.2 applicants in Assam, 1.9 crore residents were

cleared in first round on January 1 this year. Early this month, authorities had disclosed that 1.5 lakh people will be dropped from the first list, since anomalies were found in their documents. Around 50,000 of them are rural women.

The descendants of those who can prove citizenship till March 24, 1971, will be considered favourably. So will those who came between January 1, 1966 and March 25, 1971, and registered themselves with the Foreigners Registration Regional Officer.

All those whose names are not there in the draft NRC will get another chance at appealing to the NRC authorities. But those who do not have their names in the final NRC either, will be deemed as not a citizen of the country. They will have to fight the battle in the foreigners’ tribunals to prove that they are Indians. Assam is unhappy about a proposed law that would allow illegal migrants from the minority communities of Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan eligible for citizenship after six years of stay in India. The Citizenship Amendment Bill 2016 was a promise made by Narendra Modi ahead of the 2014 general elections.

But the idea has had the residents up in arms in Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya and Manipur, which share a porous border with Bangladesh. Some of the BJP's alliance partners have threatened to withdraw support from the coalition governments in the northeast.