NRC and Citizenship Bill

Citizenship (Amendment) bill, 2016.

  • The Bill amends the Citizenship Act, 1955 to make illegal migrants who are Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, eligible for citizenship.
  • Under the Act, one of the requirements for citizenship by naturalisation is that the applicant must have resided in India during the last 12 months, and for 11 of the previous 14 years. The Bill relaxes this 11 year requirement to six years for persons belonging to the same six religions and three countries.
  • The Bill provides that the registration of Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) cardholders may be cancelled if they violate any law.

Issues with the present bill

  • The Bill makes illegal migrants eligible for citizenship on the basis of religion. Differentiating on the basis religion may violate Article 14 of the Constitution which guarantees right to equality.
  • The Bill allows cancellation of OCI registration for violation of any law. This is a wide ground that may cover a range of violations, including minor offences (eg. parking in a no parking zone or jumping a red light).

National Register for Citizen

  • The first draft of an updated National Register of Citizens (NRC) for Assam was published recently by the Assam government.
  • Assam is the only State that had prepared an NRC in 1951.
  • National Register of Citizens (NRC) was prepared first in 1951 after the conduct of the Census of 1951
  • The NRC will be now updated to include the names of those persons (or their descendants) who appear in the NRC, 1951, or in any of the Electoral Rolls up to the midnight of 24th March, 1971 or in any one of the other admissible documents issued up to midnight of 24th March, 1971, which would prove their presence in Assam or in any part of India on or before 24th March, 1971.
  • All the names appearing in the NRC, 1951, or any of the Electoral Rolls up to the midnight of 24th March 1971 together are called Legacy Data. Thus, there will be two requirements for inclusion in updated NRC – 1.) Existence of a person’s name in the pre-1971 period & 2.) Providing linkage with that person.
  • The provisions governing NRC update in Assam are The Citizenship Act, 1955, and The Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity cards) Rules,2003.
  • The demands to update the NRC of 1951 were first raised by the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) and Assam Gana Parishad more than three decades ago.
  • The organisations had submitted a memorandum to the Centre on January 18, 1980, two months after launching the anti-illegal foreigners Assam Movement.
  • On November 17, 1999, at an official-level tripartite meeting to review the implementation of the Assam Accord, a decision was taken that the NRC would be updated and the Centre sanctioned Rs 20 lakh for the purpose and released Rs 5 lakh of it to start the exercise.
  • Later, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh led government took the final decision to update NRC on May 5, 2005.
  • Thereafter, the government created a directorate for updating the NRC and the process of computerisation of the voters’ list up to 1971 and the NRC of 1951 began.

Assam Accord

  • The Assam Accord (1985) was a Memorandum of Settlement (MoS) signed between representatives of the Government of India and the leaders of the Assam Movement in New Delhi on 15 August 1985.
  • A six-year agitation demanding identification and deportation of illegal immigrants was launched by the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) in 1979.
  • It culminated with the signing of the Assam Accord.

Location: Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India

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