Guwahati: Days after a Supreme Court constitutional bench upheld the validity of Section 6A of the Citizenship Act, 1955, petitioners who had sought its quashing expressed both rage and disappointment over the judgement.
While some said that the Supreme Court’s decision could be “perilous and detrimental for the future of ethnic Assamese identity”, others likened it to one that was “reflective of a colonial mindset”.
By validating Section 6A, the judgement upheld the citizenship of those immigrants who arrived in Assam between January 1, 1966, and March 25, 1971.
The petitioners had challenged the section on grounds that the cut-off date to be eligible for Indian citizenship should not be different for Assam and the rest of India.
Section 6A was added to the Citizenship Act to incorporate the agreements made in the 1985 Assam Accord between the Union government, the Assam government, the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) and the All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad, following a six-year agitation by Assam-based groups against “illegal immigration” from what was then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).
Among the petitioners let down by the Supreme Court verdict is Dipak Nath, a resident of Tezpur in upper Assam.
Nath had been an active participant in the ‘anti-foreigner’ movement. His brother, Roopak Nath, was shot dead during mass protests across Assam in 1982 and Dipak’s house was burnt down as part of a “political conspiracy” to quell the agitation, he maintains.
“This Supreme Court decision is utterly disheartening. So many young men died because of this issue. My own brother succumbed to bullet injuries. My first question is why did the All-Assam Students’ Union agree to it? It [Section 6A] is not mentioned in [the Assam] Accord. How many illegal immigrants have been expelled from Assam?” he asked.
Nath is worried about what will happen to the CAA – Citizenship Amendment Act – now. “We will explore legal provisions instead of giving up, even if it takes time,” he said.
Another petitioner and the working president of the ethno-nationalist confederation named the Assam Sanmilita Mahasangha (ASM), Matiur Rahman, told The Wire, “The Supreme Court’s decision amplifies the notion that Assam is a colony of India. This has caused a perilous situation for the future of the ethnic Assamese community, a future that will be detrimental for sure for our future generation.”
“The decision will only act as leverage for the influx problem,” he said.
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Genesis of the case
The majority judgement largely went against most of the arguments put forth by Rahman; Gobinda Basumatary, the former general secretary of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland Progressive; Rana Prasad Deuri, president of the Indigenous Tribal Peoples Federation; Pranab Majumdar, a former member of the ASM and the All-Assam Ahom Sabha; and citizen activist Dipak Nath.
As petitioners, they wanted the cutoff year for Indian citizenship to be based on the first census report of 1951, contesting that the cutoff date for citizenship for Assam could not be different from the rest of India.
Section 6A, introduced to the Citizenship Act on December 7, 1985, after the Assam Accord, divides undocumented immigrants into three groups: those who entered Assam before 1966, those who arrived between 1966 and the beginning of the Bangladesh War on March 25, 1971, and those who arrived after March 25, 1971.
The first category of immigrants (before 1966) were given citizenship, while the second group had to be regularised (given voting rights) after 10 years. The third group were found ineligible for citizenship, and therefore, had to be deported.
The petitioners believed that the second category of immigrants exerted pressure on Assam’s resources, and asserted that by granting citizenship to them, the Union government accorded them a special privilege while denying equal rights to Assam’s indigenous people.
The Supreme Court, after hearing the petition for over a decade (the PIL was filed in 2012) upheld Section 6A and the existing arrangement in Assam in a 4:1 majority judgement.
The court emphasised that Section 6A was introduced to uphold the Assam Accord, which aimed to end the six years of violence that gripped Assam between 1979 and 1985. The Accord was signed by then-prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, the AASU and its political offshoot, the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), to address the simmering discontent among the ethnic Assamese.
The top court in its verdict specified, “Since Section 6A was predicated on the terms of the Assam Accord, it extended citizenship solely to immigrants in Assam because the Union of India had exclusively engaged in this accord with Assam.”
While striking down the petition, the Supreme Court stated that the petitioners needed to establish both that there had been an adverse impact on Assamese culture and that this impact was caused by the “legitimisation of the citizenship status of pre-1971 immigrants”.
Why the rage?
The petitioners, however, claimed that nowhere in the world would one find a legal provision that seeks to shelter “foreigners” and that Assam was the sole exception.
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“This is the same court that had struck down the controversial IMDT [Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals)] Act in 2005. Neither the political establishment nor the administration did a thing to solve this issue. So, for the rest of India it is 1950, but for Assam it is 1971. This is outrageous,” said Rahman.
“Was Bangladesh carved out of Assam or vice versa? The Britishers had brought people in Assam and their population doubled in years. So, why didn’t the Supreme Court give a decision that those who came to Assam after 1951 would be distributed in the rest of India, and why did it burden us with the influx? The decision is one-sided in entirety and unconstitutional,” he added.
“The genesis of our fight was the 1951 NRC [National Register of Citizens] as the baseline year for granting citizenship. We will engage legal experts and seek legal recourse,” he said, unsure about the way forward.
Similarly, Pranab Majumdar, once a member of Rahman’s Assam Sanmilita Mahasangha and a petitioner against Section 6A, said, “The verdict is quite unfortunate for the people of Assam. This shows the step-motherly treatment meted to Assam and its ethnic Assamese identity. This will be dangerous for the future of our identity.”
They also believe that Assam has historically faced problems because of periodic immigration cycles – first when the British brought Bengali-speaking people there as employees and labourers, followed by cyclical immigration from East Pakistan and now Bangladesh.
Jawaharlal Nehru introduced the Immigration (Expulsion from Assam) Act, 1950 to remove foreigners from Assam, but also introduced a humanitarian clause in it that allowed persecuted non-Muslims from East Pakistan to take refuge in Assam or West Bengal.
A different view in Assam
The parties who signed the Assam Accord, however, have cautiously welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision, given the sensitive nature of the case in Assam.
Speaking to The Wire, Samujjal Bhattacharya, the AASU’s chief advisor, said, “The Supreme Court decision validates the Assam Accord. It is a landmark and historic judgement. Now, it is up to the state and the Union governments to formulate and lay down the proper framework to implement the various provisions of the Assam Accord in full gusto.”
He added: “The people of Assam can now look forward to the future. The decision has ended the arguments and debates over the cutoff date and baseline year.”
Ainuddin Ahmed, an advisor in the All-Assam Minority Students’ Union, concurred.
“We have welcomed the decision. The Assam agitation was a violent chapter in our state’s history. What we have to do now is for all of us to live in peace and harmony and live according to the principles of Srimanta Sankaradeva and Azan Fakir. We are thankful to the people associated with the Assam Accord.”
Political impact
The Supreme Court judgement has also, in a way, left chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s ambition to set 1951 as the cutoff date open-ended.
In September, Sarma said, “The state government has accepted 1951 as the cutoff date. In spirit we have accepted 1951 as the base year. We have been doing it for the past three years for the Mission Basundhara scheme. It is not like the cut-off will apply when someone wants to apply for a driver’s licence. It is meant for certain schemes. It will not affect day-to-day life.”
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It should be noted that the sensitive yet contentious issues of citizenship and illegal immigrants were rendered more complex by the Union government’s implementation of the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill of 2019, through which it wanted to grant Indian citizenship to non-Muslims from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.
Protests ensued in the winter of 2019 against the Bill. The violence led to the deaths of five people – Sam Stafford, Dipanjal Das, Ishwar Nayak, Abdul Alim and Dwijendra Panging – on account of alleged police firing when the protests were at their peak.
The violent demonstrations echoed the unrest of the agitation in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Interestingly, the AASU was a part of the protests against the CAA that took place in Assam in March this year. The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill was passed in parliament in 2019 and the Act was implemented by the BJP-led Union government on March 11, 2024, just ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.
The protests were mostly called by the Congress and 16 other opposition parties. At the same time, a group of around 30 non-political organisations including the AASU also called for peaceful protests against the CAA. It was widely reported that copies of the Act were burned in various places.
In early March, it was reported that the AASU would sit on a 12-hour hunger strike to protest Modi’s visit to Assam before the elections. Critics of the BJP said that both Sarma and Modi were out to grab electoral points out of the CAA.
