The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that an individual’s name being listed in the draft National Register of Citizens of 2018 does not overrule a prior declaration by a Foreigners Tribunal that the person is a foreigner.
The bench of Justices Sanjay Karol and Manoj Misra upheld a Gauhati High Court decision which had declined to overturn the tribunal’s 2017 finding against a man named Rofiqul Hoque.
Foreigners Tribunals in Assam are quasi-judicial bodies that adjudicate on matters of citizenship.
In 2016, the Sivasagar Police in Assam had made a reference to the Foreigners Tribunal, alleging that Hoque was a foreigner who had entered India without documentation after March 25, 1971. Only those living in the state before March 25, 1971, or their descendants, qualify as Indian citizens in Assam, as per the Assam Accord.
Hoque submitted several documents before the tribunal to prove his Indian citizenship, including voter lists showing that his grandfather’s name was in the voter list of 1966, while his grandmother’s name was in the voter list of 1970. He also submitted his own duplicate school leaving certificate.
The tribunal, however, said that the place of residence of Hoque’s grandfather, as listed in voter lists, was in a different village from the one that Hoque had claimed. On March 4, 2017, the tribunal ruled that Hoque had failed to prove that he was an Indian citizen, after which he approached the High Court.
The High Court, while upholding the decision of the tribunal, questioned why Hoque had submitted a duplicate school leaving certificate without any proof that he had lost the original one. The High Court also questioned why the certificate was issued 10 years after Hoque left the school, and why the school headmaster had not been examined.
In July 2018, Assam published a draft National Register of Citizens that left out over 40 lakh applicants. Hoque’s name, however, was included in the register.
In his petition before the Supreme Court, Hoque argued that because his name had been included in the draft National Register of Citizens, he could no longer be considered a foreigner.
However, the court rejected this claim, citing a judgment from 2019 holding that a person’s inclusion in the National Register of Citizens did not nullify a prior tribunal ruling.
A bench of Justices Sanjay Karol and Manoj Misra said that in view of the Supreme Court ruling in 2019 and the tribunal’s declaration in Hoque’s case, “the name of the appellant could not have been included in the draft NRC and, secondly, even if it has been included, it would not annul the declaration made by the Tribunal”.
In February, Scroll tracked down relatives of seven of the 63 persons who were declared foreigners and have challenged the order of the foreigners’ tribunals in various constitutional courts, including in the Supreme Court. All of them contested the Assam government’s claim that they were from Bangladesh.
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