How many people got benefit of Section 6A introduced in Citizenship Act following Assam accord: SC asks Centre

A constitution bench headed by CJI D Y Chandrachud commenced hearing 17 petitions to examine the constitutional validity of section 6A of the Citizenship Act relating to illegal immigrants in Assam. Reports ETV Bharat's Sumit Saxena.

New Delhi:The Supreme Court Tuesday asked the Centre how many people got the benefit of Section 6A introduced in the Citizenship Act following the Assam accord and further queried if very few people got it then it is a clear indicator that the rest are all illegal immigrants. The Centre said it will get back to the court with details. The apex court also observed that Section 6A of the Citizenship Act was enacted as a humanitarian measure, and it is interwoven in our history.

A constitution bench headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) D Y Chandrachud and comprising justices Surya Kant, M M Sundresh, J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, commenced hearing on 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 CJI 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?”

Mehta replied, “On that part, we will immediately start working on". The CJI said if very few people got it and it is a clear indicator that the rest are all illegal immigrants and stressed, “How many people actually got benefit of it?” Mehta said, “we will get the details…”. The CJI asked Mehta to check with the officers, how are they interpreting it – has 6A now come to an end completely in the sense, can somebody make an application today and say, give me the benefit of 6A and has that period come to an end on July 16, 2013?

The bench said Rule 19 (2), 6A says make an application to the registering authority in the manner prescribed and rule takes a cut-off date as July 16, 2013, and “for those who did not receive the order detecting them to be a foreigner, it just gave them 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”, CJI told Mehta.

The CJI further queried Mehta, what happens when the order of the tribunal detecting a person as a foreigner is after July 2013? What is the status of that person? We need to find out how many were identified as foreigners before 2013. Mehta suggested that he would be liable to be deported. The CJI said that he will say I am entitled to the benefit of 6A, provided other conditions are fulfilled. Mehta submitted that he will get back to the court on this.

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 it 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 5 years. Divan said the socio-cultural, economic and other rights of the indigenous people are getting 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”, said the bench.

The apex 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 in 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 apex court told Divan that his client’s petition highlights a very significant problem that post-1971 nothing has been done by successive governments to curb the infiltration, but it is not an issue of constitutional validity rather it is about the enforcement of law.

The apex court noted one thing you have to bear in mind is that if Parliament were to merely grant amnesty to a group of illegal immigrants, then that can be a very different situation. “But we can’t deny that section 6A was enacted at a point which is deeply connected to our history, namely, that India had a very vital role, if I may use that expression, in the creation of Bangladesh. Because we were part of the war as much as Bangladesh was and illegal immigration took place then,” said the bench.

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.