Millions in Assam disenfranchised

On April 2019, BBC Urdu service ‘sairbeen’ in its report on plight of Bengalis who had migrated to Assam at the time of disintegration of Pakistan. Earlier, at the time of partition of the sub-continent many Hindus and others had migrated to Assam, and in 1951the government had started National Registration of Citizens (NRC), which was abandoned after the people had settled down or gone back to Bangladesh. However, in 1971 millions of Bengalis mostly Muslims had crossed over to Assam. When Bengalis population continued to grow, the Supreme Court revived the NRC two years ago to distinguish between foreigners and Indian citizens. According to the report, Assam’s population is 33 million and more than 34 per cent are Muslims. BJP President Amit Shah termed Muslim immigrants as termites, and vowed to throw all of them out. Anyhow, four million people have been kept out of the NRC list.
Many Bengalis in western Assam fear that this could be their last vote in the elections, as their names did not figure in the draft National Register of Citizens (NRC), although they had been voting for the past 15 years. The NRC has recently been updated with March 24, 1971 set as the cut-off date as decided in the Assam Accord of 1985. On the face of it the objective is to segregate the citizens from the “illegal migrants”, and the Supreme Court is said to be monitoring the exercise. Allaying the fears of over 40 lakh persons whose names were not included in the draft Assam NRC, the Election Commission of India (ECI) had told the Supreme Court that exclusion will not affect their voting rights in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls provided their names feature in the electoral rolls.
At the outset, the bench asked the ECI secretary, who had been summoned by the court, what will be the status of the persons whose names do not feature in the draft NRC but feature in the electoral rolls. On March 8, the apex court had asked the poll panel secretary to appear before it next hearing in connection with a PIL alleging that several categories of persons in Assam have been deprived of voting rights ahead of the Lok Sabha polls. The secretary replied that exclusion will not have any bearing on the voting rights of such individuals. The Public Interest Litigation (PIL) alleged that a category of persons whose names were deleted from the voter list included some whose names appeared in the draft NRC published on July 30, 2018. The petition claimed these people had voted in the last Lok Sabha election held in 2014.
The plea also submitted that there was a second category of people whose names were not included in the complete draft NRC, but they subsequently filed claims for inclusion of their names in it. They had voted in the previous Lok Sabha elections and were waiting for inclusion of their names in the voters’ list. The third category of people included those who have been declared as foreigners by the foreigners’ tribunal as well as the Guwahati High Court. The court’s order was stayed by the apex court. The fourth category of people comprised those who had already been declared foreigners by the foreigners’ tribunal and such declarations were set aside by the apex court. However, their names have been deleted from the voters’ list pursuant to the order of the foreigners’ tribunal, the petition said.
In the Valley in IHK, election was marred with violence, as there has been complete boycott of the elections either because of strike or curfew imposed by the government. Meanwhile, Indian security forces continue with the acts of barbarism. In quite a few cases, patients in critical condition and on oxygen were stopped and had to wait for hours, not realizing that they could die if treatment was delayed. BJP in a new election gimmick has released posters and pamphlets in Hindi stating “your correct vote can buy you a plot in Kashmir”.