Thousands in Assam fear future
MUMBAI: India said yesterday it had excluded more than 4 million people from a draft list of citizens in the border state of Assam who could not produce valid documents, a move that has sparked fears about the future of thousands in the region.
Security has been tightened across the state, which borders Bangladesh, as thousands of Bengalispeaking Muslims worry about being sent to detention centres or deported, a Reuters witness said.
The tearich state of Assam has long been the centre of social and communal tensions with locals campaigning against illegal immigrants, a fight Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalistled government has championed.
In 1983, scores of people were chased down and killed by machet earmed mobs intent on hounding out Muslim immigrants.
The Government said the draft was not meant to drive people out and those struck off the list would have a chance to reapply.
‘‘Based on this draft, there is no question of anyone being taken to detention centres or foreigners’ tribunal,’’ Sailesh, India’s census commissioner who uses only one name, told reporters in Guwahati, the state’s main city.
Hundreds of thousands of people fled to India from Bangladesh during Bangladesh’s war of independence from Pakistan in the early 1970s.
Most of them settled in Assam, which has a near270km border with Bangladesh.
More than 30 million people had applied and 4,007,707 had been excluded from the list, Sailesh said.
To be recognised as Indian citizens, all residents of Assam had to produce documents proving they or their families lived in the country before March 24, 1971.
Sailesh did not provide a breakdown of people who had failed to make to the draft list.
Critics see the citizenship test as another measure supported by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) aimed at minority Muslims.
The BJP denies any bias but says it opposes a policy of appeasement of any community. Authorities in the state have previously said the citizenship test was crucial to protect ethnic Assamese, many of whom have demanded removal of outsiders they accuse of taking jobs and cornering resources in the state of 33 million.
The first draft of the National Register of Citizens (NRC), released on December 31, confirmed the citizenship of 19 million people, leading to jubilation for some and heartbreak among others.
The NRC, however, told the Supreme Court this month that 150,000 people from the first list, a third of them married women, would be dropped from the next one, mainly because they provided false information or gave inadmissible documents.
‘‘If the government has decided to brand us foreigners what can we do?’’ said Abdul Suban (60), a Bengalispeaking Muslim, earlier.
‘‘The NRC is trying to finish us off. Our people have died here, but we will not leave this place.’’