NELECC demands ordinance for citizenship to persecuted migrants

The North East Linguistic and Ethnic Co-Ordination Committee (NELECC), a conglomerate of different organisations in Barak Valley, has demanded the promulgation of an ordinance for providing citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, Parsis, Jains, Buddhists and Christians who fled from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan due to religious persecution or fear of religious persecution and took shelter in India.

In a memorandum submitted to minister for external affairs V.K. Singh on Wednesday in Silchar, the committee stated that the National Register of Citizens (NRC) update process is in the final stage and lakhs of residents are living in apprehension regarding inclusion of their names in the citizenry register. As such, the fear of being tagged as foreigners and becoming stateless is presently haunting a large number of people in the state, the memorandum said.

The NRC, being updated in Assam under the supervision of the Supreme Court, has been a “hot topic” in the state and the Northeast, especially for the past one to two years. The final draft NRC, published on July 30, 2018 featured names of around 2.89 crore citizens out of 3.29 crore citizens. Over 40.70 lakh citizens’ names were left out.

The committee mentioned about the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill and said it might take a long time for the proposed bill, which has been facing opposition from different circles in the Northeast, to get implemented and as such citizenship to the persecuted migrants is in an uncertain state. There is a need to ensure that the persecuted migrants do not face harassment anymore and thus an ordinance under Article 123 of the Constitution should be passed at the earliest, the committee stressed.

The committee opined that the ordinance should be related/relevant to the citizenship bill and should have a couple of modifications. These are — inclusion of an appropriate provision in the ordinance by which the names of applicants from Assam applying for citizenship under the amended Act (presently in the status of a bill) be included automatically in the NRC when they are granted citizenship by naturalisation under Section-6 of the Citizenship Act, 1955 and Section 6(A) of the Citizenship Act, 1955 as amended upto-date should be made non-applicable for new citizens applying from the state.