Assam Cabinet Again Invokes ‘Infiltrators’ to Place Curbs on Aadhaar Enrolment
The Wire Staff
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New Delhi: Assam's cabinet has again announced curbs on the issuance of new Aadhaar cards in a move against “illegal infiltrators”.
Chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said on Saturday (June 13) that his government will not issue new Aadhaar cards to adults unless approved on a case-by-case basis or the person belongs to an ST or tea garden community.
“Assam is already saturated as far as Aadhaar is concerned” and some districts have Aadhaar enrolment rates of up to 115%, Sarma told reporters on Saturday.
He pointed to ‘illegal immigrants’ and ‘infiltrators’ as the reason behind the high enrolment rates. “We want to fully prove that no illegal immigrant is taking advantage of Aadhaar [sic],” Sarma said.
“No one will get the Aadhaar [card] if the citizen is [18 or older]. If at all there is some genuine person, then the deputy commissioner has to send a proposal, [which the government] will approve. But no more Aadhaar cards will be issued at the deputy commissioner-level to the citizens,” he said.
ST and tea garden communities stand exempted from the measures until March 31, 2027.
Sarma had announced a similar measure in August last year, also citing the need to “curb illegal infiltration”. At that time he said the cabinet had decided Aadhaar cards would not be issued to adults barring the “rarest of rare cases” or unless the persons belonged to SC, ST and tea garden communities, who were granted an exemption for one year.
The curbs come against the backdrop of Sarma and the BJP's invective against undocumented immigrants – specifically Muslims said to be from Bangladesh – and the state government's moves to expel people deemed to fall in that category.
In the run-up to the assembly elections held earlier this year the state BJP unit put up a video depicting Sarma as shooting at undocumented immigrants, who were overtly shown as Muslims. The chief minister has stood by the video.
His government has also invoked a 1950 law to issue expulsion orders to people it said are undocumented immigrants that effectively sidestep the state's contentious foreigners' tribunal system and the Union government's deportation rules.
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