How many people received benefit of humanitarian measure after Assam accord, SC asks Centre

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Union government to explain how many people benefited from Section 6A introduced in the Citizenship Act as a humanitarian measure following the Assam accord.

It stated that if very few people benefited, it is a clear indicator that the rest are illegal immigrants.

A Constitution bench of Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud and Justices Surya Kant, M M Sundresh, J B Pardiwala, and Manoj Misra began hearing 17 petitions to examine the constitutional validity of section 6A of the Citizenship Act relating to illegal immigrants in Assam.

Section 6A in the Citizenship Act was inserted as a special provision to deal with the citizenship of people covered by the Assam Accord.

The bench asked Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the Centre, “How many people took citizenship in pursuance of this provision when Section 6A was in practical operation? 6A is in force but the practical operation came to an end around July 16, 2013. How many people benefited from it? (sic)”

Mehta said he would furnish the details.

The bench also directed Mehta to inquire with the officers about their interpretation of the provision. Specifically, they sought clarification on whether the provision has concluded entirely. In other words, they asked whether an individual can currently submit an application, stating, "Grant me the benefit of Section 6A," and if the timeframe for such applications ended on July 16, 2013.

"For those who did not receive the order detecting them to be a foreigner, it just gave them a period of 30 days from that date of notification. Do we take it now, nobody can take the benefit of Section 6A today (after 2013)? Let the authorities implementing the provision of the Act tell us (sic)," the bench told Mehta.

During the day-long hearing, the apex court, while acknowledging the problem of cross-border infiltration in Assam, referred to the humanitarian aspect of the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war for the liberation of Bangladesh, which also led to the influx of immigrants. The apex court also observed that Section 6A of the Citizenship Act was enacted as a humanitarian measure and is interwoven in our history.

The CJI told senior advocate Shyam Divan, representing petitioners, that there is no material before the court to indicate that the impact of granting certain benefits to citizens who came in between 1966-1971 was so grave that the demographic and cultural identity of the state was affected by those five years.

Divan said the socio-cultural, economic, and other rights of the indigenous people are being affected due to the influx and the special provision.

The CJI asked Divan that he has to indicate the impact of Section 6A on the demographic, that it destroyed the cultural demography. “Unless you indicate to the court that the impact of Section 6A on the demographic is to destroy the cultural demography…. we have to have data. Data which goes on right through 2020 (sic),” the bench said.

The court noted that Assam undoubtedly has a problem, and there is no doubt about the fact that there is infiltration, but the court is not testing that in the present matter, and the constitutional validity issue is on the cut-off adopted.

Divan argued that the court is not dealing with some taxing statute and it is dealing with citizenship, political rights, issues of tremendous importance not only for the current generation but the future generations as well. He said there will have to be a very strong justification which will have to be furnished by the State in support of this stand, and it is not enough to say that "I had a political settlement, an Assam Accord and so I made a law".

Divan vehemently argued that "If you are giving legitimacy or citizenship to someone who has entered at a particular time, and it is reasonable to expect that those people will also have children and you will have a multiplier effect in subsequent decades."

The hearing in the matter will continue on Wednesday.

Section 6 A says those who came to Assam on or after January 1, 1966 but before March 25, 1971, from specified territories, including Bangladesh, in accordance with the Citizenship Act amended in 1985, and since then are residents of the northeastern state, must register themselves under Section 18 for acquiring Indian citizenship. As a result, the provision fixes March 25, 1971, as the cut-off date for granting citizenship to Bangladeshi migrants in Assam.

Section 6A was inserted into the 1955 Act in furtherance of a Memorandum of Settlement called the ‘Assam Accord’ signed on August 15, 1985, by the then Rajiv Gandhi Government with the leaders of the Assam Movement to preserve and protect the Assamese culture, heritage, linguistic and social identity.