Typos, technicalities used to deny citizenship claims in Assam: Report | India News

Even as citizenship points are being raised in many elements of the nation, a brand new report questions the authorized course of adopted by the Foreigners Tribunals (FTs) and Gauhati excessive courtroom in declaring 1.6 lakh individuals as “foreigners” in Assam.According to the report, citizenship was denied on the premise of minor spelling errors and confusion between honorific titles and precise names, whereas credible oral testimony was dismissed. The findings have been based mostly on an evaluation of over 1,200 Gauhati HC orders, key Supreme Court judgments, orders of the FTs, and intensive interviews with legal professionals and litigants. Among the circumstances cited are: Barpeta resident Rahman Ali submitted paperwork for citizenship in 2012, itemizing his father’s title as Khurshed Ali. His declare was rejected a 12 months later with the authorities ruling that this was a discrepancy as his father’s title registered as Furshed Ali in the 1965 and 1970 voter rolls, despite the fact that it was accurately registered as Khurshed in 1989, 1997 and 2010.Maharjan Nessa’s uncle’s testimony was dismissed in 2019 as a result of he was unaware of when her father had bought land in Gobardhana village in Baksa district, a element irrelevant to her citizenship standing.Ibrahim Ali’s petition was denied as a result of his father’s title appeared as ‘Late Nurul’ in the 1989 voter roll and ‘Nurul Islam’ in the 1965 and 1970 voter rolls for Toktoki village in Nagaon district.Besides such rejections, there are over 85,000 pending circumstances. The FTs are anticipated to hear one million appeals from these excluded from the National Register of Citizens (NRC). The report titled ‘Unmaking Citizens: The Architecture of Rights Violations and Exclusion in India’s Citizenship Trials’ by the National Law School of India University and Queen Mary University of London describes this as a “burgeoning crisis”. It argues that the FTs – somewhat than being flawed exceptions-have turn out to be routine devices of exclusion.The report comes at a time when Parliament has enacted the brand new Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025. In this context, the report requires an pressing, elementary rethinking of the authorized constructions governing citizenship in India, calling the present system not simply damaged, however actively unjust.“Even though the citizenship verification process has ostensibly been carried out under the cover of law and sometimes even under court supervision, our report shows that it fails to align with core constitutional and legal principles,” says Mohsin Alam Bhat, regulation professor at Queen Mary University and co-author of the report. “People are asked to produce unreasonable documentation. Worse, the system is designed to reject even the documentary and oral evidence they do manage to provide.“Some of the explanations for denying citizenship are towards settled regulation, the report says. For occasion, FTs and the Gauhati HC routinely rejected essential official paperwork, similar to gram panchayat certificates and voter rolls, over minor formatting flaws, inconsistencies in ink colour, or the absence of particulars like particular govt headers. Slight variations in an individual’s title, title, or age turned grounds for denial, despite the fact that such inconsistencies are frequent in rural information. Even when credible witnesses, together with relations with direct information, testified to an individual’s citizenship or familial relationships, their statements have been typically dismissed simply because they might not recall particulars just like the exact 12 months a household moved to a village, the date of a wedding, or a delivery date.Additionally, FTs and the HC have routinely dismissed post-1971 paperwork as “irrelevant” or “not proof of citizenship”. This led to paperwork like Aadhaar, PAN playing cards, and ration playing cards, which might set up steady residence or familial ties, being summarily rejected.Another problem has been the steadily weakening {qualifications} for FT members. In 2011, solely retired officers of the judicial service have been eligible. By 2015, advocates who had 10 years of expertise could possibly be appointed. In 2019, this was additional broadened to embody civil servants and legal professionals with solely seven years of expertise.The report argues that the courts haven’t handled these procedural violations as errors of regulation critical sufficient to invalidate FT proceedings. Bhat says, “The high court has adopted the same narrow approach to evidence as the tribunals, rejecting testimony and documents for minor, technical discrepancies without considering them in totality, as settled evidentiary practice would require.”