Assam Assembly elections: Who is a doubtful voter?

The contention surrounding D-votes was one of the many issues in poll-bound Assam this year

Assam concluded the third and final phase of its Assembly elections on April 6 with an impressive 82.28 per cent voter turnout.

Weeks before that, political parties had clashed in the state and held roaring rallies to convince as many voters about their parties’ prowess as they could.

Many issues like the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, insurgency, problems plaguing the tea workers were raked and promises were made. Among those issues, the contention surrounding D-votes had also cropped up.

Read | 4 Assam polling stations to go for re-polling on April 20, EC announces

Who is a D-voter?

D-voters or doubtful voters are those who could not provide evidence in favour of their Indian nationality and whose cases are pending with the Foreigners Tribunals or who have been declared as foreigners by the Tribunal.

In this year's Assembly election, Assam had 1.08 lakh D-voters who couldn’t exercise their franchise. The figure of D-voters has decreased in comparison to the last Assembly elections, when the number was 1.13 lakh.

Altogether, 83,008 cases of doubtful voters were pending in the Foreigners Tribunals in Assam while 86,756 others were declared as foreigners in the last five years, the government had informed the Lok Sabha in September last year.

In October 2020, the state coordinator of the National Register of Citizens (NRC), a list of the state's citizens, had instructed various deputy commissioners to prepare a list of such voters — persons facing trial in the foreigners' tribunals, children younger than 14 years with one of the parents having dubious nationality, among others.

Currently, Assam, which has faced an influx from Bangladesh since the early 20th century, is the only state which has an NRC, first prepared in 1951. The latest exercise, started in 2005 under the then Congress regime, got a major push only after the BJP came to power in the state after the 2016 Assembly elections.

The final NRC list was released on August 31, 2019, with the exclusion of 19.06 lakh people from it. Many cases had surfaced where a person was a voter in Assam for many years but did not find place in the NRC list.

In the run-up to this year’s Assembly elections, Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora, citing a Union Home Ministry order, had said that those excluded from the final NRC can vote in the assembly polls if their names are there in the published electoral rolls.

Read | Assam's Anchalik Gana Morcha urges EC to videograph counting process

What did the political parties have to say?

AIUDF General Secretary Aminul Islam had asked the EC for a permanent solution to the problems of such voters who exist only in Assam. ”There is nothing except voter and non-voter in the other states but in Assam there exists the doubtful voter until they are declared foreigners,” he said.

“We requested the Election Commission that doubtful voters should be allowed to vote unless they have been declared as foreigners," he added.

Lurinjyoti Gogoi, president of the newly formed Assam Jatiya Parishad, however, said that those excluded from the NRC should not be allowed to vote as it will only lead to the advantage of some political parties.

"Lakhs of Indian citizens were excluded in the NRC but names of many illegal immigrants are there in it. The NRC document in its present form has not been accepted by the party and we have asked for a re-verification. Till it is done, status quo has to be maintained as the notification is yet to be issued," BJP Assam unit president Ranjeet Dass has said.

The Congress had alleged the NRC Assam coordinator's directive to prepare a list of 'D-voters' (doubtful voters) amounted to contempt of court as the Supreme Court's permission was not taken.

(With inputs from PTI)