Proof of Citizenship

The Gauhati High Court last week passed a very significant order – in a reiteration of an earlier judgment of the same Court – that the Electoral Photo Identity Card (EPIC) is not a proof of citizenship. The order was passed while disposing of a writ petition filed by one Munindra Biswas of Margherita, who had challenged an order of the Foreigner’s Tribunal of Tinsukia district which had declared him as a foreigner as he came after 1971. A Gauhati High Court bench comprising Justices Manojit Bhuyan and Parthivjit Saikia had on February 12 recalled an earlier order that the same High Court had passed against a writ petition filed by Md Babul Islam in 2016, which had held that Electoral Photo Identity Card was not a proof of citizenship. It is important to note that there are several very well-organised networks of influential and moneyed people which are engaged in arranging various kinds of government documents for the illegal migrants of erstwhile East Pakistan and present-day Bangladesh so that these people could pass off as Indian citizens. Such networks have in them persons with good knowledge of law, apart from bribing and influencing lower-level government employees in order to procure various kinds of documents – both forged and genuine. A number of such incidents of issuing backdated and fake birth certificates had come to light during the verification of documents while preparing the National Register of Citizens (NRC). A number of persons involved in such rackets were arrested too. It was also found that bunches of birth certificates were issued by some specific health centres and hospitals in certain districts which have undergone demographic changes in the past few decades. It is a common suspicion that several lakhs of suspected illegal migrants and their progeny did get enrolled in the NRC through similar means. A random forensic examination of such documents will surely prove this suspicion to be true.