National Register of Citizens | By Shubhang Shukla

What is the NRC?

The citizenship act 1955 provides for compulsory registration of every citizen of India and issuance of national identity card to him. The citizenship rules 2003 framed under the citizenship act 1955 prescribe the manner of preparation of national register of citizens. 

The only time that a national register of citizens (NRC) was prepared was in 1951 when after the conduct of the census of 1951 the NRC was prepared by recording particulars of all the persons enumerated during the census. 

All the names appearing in the NRC 1951 or any of the electoral rolls up to midnight of 24th March 1971 together are called Legacy data. 

Thus there will be two requirements for inclusion in updated NRC- 

● Existence of a person's name in the pre-1971 period and 

● Proving linkage with that person. 

Forgetting their names included in the updated NRC, citizens shall have to submit application forms (family-wise). 

Application forms received by the government shall be verified and based on the results of verification of particulars submitted by the citizens in their application forms, the updated NRC shall be prepared. However to afford another opportunity to the applicants before the publication of the final NRC, a draft NRC shall be published after verification of the application forms and the citizens are given a chance to submit claims, objections, corrections, etc. After verification of all such claims and objections, the final NRC would be published.

There is a special provision under the rules to prepare a national register of citizens (NRC) in Assam which is application based and distinct from the rest of India where the process is enumeration based. The objective of NRC in Assam is the identification of unauthorized migrants from Bangladesh after 24th March 1971 to Assam. 

One of the basic criteria for identification was that the names of the family members of the applicant should be present in the NRC prepared in 1951 or in the electoral rolls up till March 24th, 1971.

 A person also can present the following documents as proof of his/her citizenship: 

● Birth certificate 

● LIC policy 

● Land and tenancy records 

● Refugee registration certificate 

● Citizenship certificate, passport, government-issued certificate/license 

● Government employment certificate, educational certificate or court records

The Need for an NRC

 The Need for an NRC in Assam

The Assam Agitation and Assam Accord - Due to migrations (Illegal) in Assam during the 50's there originated a fear among the Assami population of losing their cultural identity and the demography of the state in the minds of its original inhabitants. In the late ‘70s, a lot of Asami students along with the All Assam Students' Union started a movement called the Assam Agitation which demanded the deportation of illegal migrants from Assam. 

On Independence Day in 1985 the Assam accord was signed between the All Assam Students' Union and the All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad and the then Union Government led by Rajiv Gandhi in order to control the Assam agitation which had turned violent at that point in time.

The provisions of the accord where that- 

● Any foreigner will be given full citizenship including the right to vote if he came to Assam between 1951 and 1961. 

● The foreigner who had migrated between 1961 and 1971 would be given all the citizenship rights except the right to vote for a period of ten years and those entering after 1971 would be denied citizenship and deported.

A petition was filed in the supreme court in 2009 by an NGO called Assam Public Works demanding that illegal Bangladeshis from Assam be identified and deported, and also their names be removed from the voter's list. 

In 2013 an order was passed by the Supreme Court for completion of the NRC update by December 31st, 2017. The NRC is updated on the basis of the Citizenship Act 1955 and the Citizenship (registration of citizens and issue of national identity cards) Rules 2003.

The Need for NRC in India 

This is the disputed area where it is argued by the current Union Government that there is a great need for NRC in India because of the immigration of illegal aliens in various different parts of India, whereas it is argued by the opposition parties that that is certainly not the case and the government is using this issue to mask other important issues and spread hysteria among the people. 

The other reason given by the government is that it would help in registering the actual citizens and help deport the illegal immigrants who are responsible for increasing the crime rate.

The Current Status of the NRC

While proposing the Citizenship Amendment Bill (now an Act) the home minister Amit Shah in the Rajya Sabha on November 20th said that the process to make a National Register of Citizens will be carried out nationally and whenever it's done the exercise will be carried out in Assam, but as of now it 25th December 2019 it hasn't been implemented.

The Flaws With the NRC Implementation in India 

● It would be in defiance with the order of the Supreme Court order which clearly specified the registration process for the state of Assam only and not the whole country. 

● The NRC process was a specific solution to the problem of Assam but extending it nationwide would simply be impractical and illogical. 

● The NRC also presumes an ideal state where each and every legal citizen would have a proof of his/her citizenship but in a country like India where there is vast illiteracy and poverty, it is very idyllic of the government to assume that the homeless, the poor, the landless or the people who lost everything due to natural catastrophes would be possessing the required documentation. 

● The NRC process in itself is flawed since it not only declares the people failing to provide the relevant documents as illegal immigrants but also the legal citizens who have some glitches in the documents that they did present. Owing to this flaw only some 40 lakh people were excluded from the initial list published on 30th July 2018. This number was later reduced 19.6 lakh in the final list out of which about 11 lakh were Bengali Hindus. 

● Another problem was the impracticality related with the detention and deportation process, how exactly is the government thinking of detaining lakhs if not crores of people and if proved illegal immigrants, of deporting them assuming the bilateral ties between India and Bangladesh are such where the neighbouring country would be willing of accepting those immigrants. 

● It has been 4 months since the list was published but the process of appeal has not started yet. That is that the cases of those left out of the final NRC will be heard in the Foreigners' Tribunals, after which applicants can approach the High Court. 

● At last, it comes to the economics of it all, the cabinet committee on economic affairs chaired by PM Modi has approved the revived cost estimates of a scheme of updation of NRC in Assam at a cost of 1220.93 crore rupees up to 31/12/18. Amidst the economic slowdown that the country is facing it beyond reasonable logic that the government would be willing to spend possibly 30 folds of the above-mentioned cost on NRC.

Shubhang Shukla

B.A.LL.B.

2019-24

Law School

Banaras Hindu University

Email- shubhangshukla21@gmail.com