The Guwahati High Court upheld the court’s order declaring a 38-year-old resident of Guwahati a foreigner, citing discrepancies in 15 documents he submitted to prove that he is an Indian and the burden of proof under Section 9 of the Foreigners Act, 1946. This section states that the burden of proving citizenship is on the person if a question arises as to whether he is a foreigner.
“Though the petitioner has produced 15 (fifteen) documents as exhibits, it does not help the petitioner to prove that he was able to discharge his burden as required under Section 9… to prove that he is not an alien but a citizen of India,” a bench of Justices Kalyan Rai Surana and Shamima Jahan said on June 30.
Aminul Haq, the petitioner, submitted copies of the 1951 National Register of Citizens, which recorded the names of his grandparents and father, certified copies of voter lists showing his parents’ names from 1966 to 2017, land purchase documents from 1973, Permanent Account Number (PAN), voter ID cards, and a school certificate.
Al-Haq’s father appeared in court and identified himself as his son. But the court found that mere oral evidence without “admissible and relevant” documentary evidence is not sufficient to prove the connection between the two matters.
The ruling came days after the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ technical clarification that a passport is not proof of nationality, which sparked controversy. The clarification has revived a long-standing legal issue that has gained new importance amid controversy over electoral roll revisions and citizenship verification exercises.
In Assam, the perceived threat from outsiders led to unrest that claimed hundreds of lives and shaped political and electoral discourse for decades.
In February 2019, the Aliens Court in Kamrup, Assam, declared the right of a foreigner. He moved the Supreme Court, saying the court had issued its order “without fair or proper investigation.”
Haque said in his petition that poverty forced him to work on daily wages in Guwahati. The citizenship status of other family members was not immediately clear.
The bench noted that the petitioner’s grandfather had four different names in the records. She added that the names of the grandfather, father and petitioner are not consistent together in the voter lists of the three villages, Dobakura, Gogoduba and Hashdoba, where the family has resided for almost the past six decades.
The court said the defense appeared to “pivot to” the voter lists offered to fill the gaps. She added that it was argued without supporting documents that the family moved from Dobakura to Gogodoba and from Gogodoba to Hashdoba. “In order to match the names contained in the voter lists, it was claimed that there was an error in registering the names in the voter lists.”
The court noted that the document showing the purchase of the land may at best be evidence of the sale, but it cannot be evidence that the petitioner has proven his connection to the buyer. The Supreme Court ruled that it is “well established” that PAN number and voter ID cards are not proof of citizenship without supporting documents such as income tax records. The school certificate was rejected, as the person who issued it did not appear to depose and support it.
“…the petitioner has not been able to prove that the court committed any apparent error in appreciating the pleadings and evidence on record, or that it considered extraneous material or that the decision was based on ignorance of law or disregard of the provisions of law.”
In 2019, the NRC was updated to identify illegal immigrants who came to Assam after 1971, although the migration of Bengali-speaking people into the state from what is now Bangladesh dates back to British rule, when they settled in fertile tracts for agriculture. Migration continued even after partition, when East Bengal became East Pakistan and, in 1971, Bangladesh.
Ethnic and linguistic tensions in Assam date back to the 19th century, when the British declared Bengali an official language in 1836, before withdrawing the move in 1873 after protests. Partition in 1947 and the linguistic reorganization of states in the 1970s sparked new protests against “outsiders.”
In the 1980s, a six-year agitation against Bangladeshi “infiltrators” ended with the signing of the 1985 Assam Accord, which was signed on March 24, 1971, as the deadline for citizenship. The government also promised to close the border with Bangladesh and detect and deport illegal immigrants who entered the country after the establishment of Bangladesh in 1971.
The government has used provisions of a 1950 law, the Assam (Expulsion of Migrants from Assam) Act, to bypass foreign courts and “return” those it considers “foreigners” to Bangladesh since last year.
