• About Us
  • Copyright Policy
  • Disclaimer
  • Authors
  • Career
  • Contact Us
Assamese |   Bengali |  
Saturday, January 16, 2021
NORTHEAST NOW
  • HOME
  • NORTH EAST
    • Assam
    • Meghalaya
    • Tripura
    • Mizoram
    • Manipur
    • Nagaland
    • Arunachal
    • Sikkim
  • Neighbours
    • Nepal
    • Bhutan
    • China
    • Myanmar
    • Bangladesh
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Sports
  • Environment
  • Citizen Journalists
  • Opinion
No Result
View All Result
  • HOME
  • NORTH EAST
    • Assam
    • Meghalaya
    • Tripura
    • Mizoram
    • Manipur
    • Nagaland
    • Arunachal
    • Sikkim
  • Neighbours
    • Nepal
    • Bhutan
    • China
    • Myanmar
    • Bangladesh
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Sports
  • Environment
  • Citizen Journalists
  • Opinion
No Result
View All Result
NORTHEAST NOW
Assamese
Home Northeast News

Has Assam NRC final draft helped lakhs of ‘foreigners’ get citizenship?

NE NOW NEWS by NE NOW NEWS
GUWAHATI , August 8, 2018 5:09 am
NRC

Representative Image. Image Credit - assamcareer.net

Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

It has been more than a week that the final draft of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) has been published. And, though the prophets of doom had said of “bloodshed and civil war”, they have been proved wrong and a sense of calm prevails throughout Assam despite the fact that 40 lakh people have found their names missing in the final draft NRC.

An article written in the The Indian Express states that not to speak of media and social analysts, even the Assam Government which had asked for an additional 150 companies of paramilitary forces to deal with possible outbreaks of violence and had sought help from the Northeast Space Application Centre for proper mapping of the char or riverine areas for better policing, seems to have been caught by surprise.

The article further states that many have attributed this calm to the assurance given by the Central Government that mere omission of names from the NRC did not amount to being labelled a foreigner and that those left out of the NRC would be able to file claims before September 28, 2018 with a hint that this date could be further extended. Others have said that it goes to the credit of the Assamese and other indigenous people that they have reacted with “maturity” to the announcement that such a large number of “foreigners” have been detected in their State. Most of the Assamese nationalist organisations like the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) and the Assam Jatiyatabadi Yuba Chhatra Parishad (AJYCP) have declared that they would help all those Indian citizens whose names have not figured in the NRC to file their claims and have even offered to provide free legal assistance to those who cannot afford it.

This sudden sense of magnanimity on the part of the AASU and its sister organisations, who have enthusiastically celebrated the publication of the final draft list, seems to stem from the fact that they see the NRC as a final vindication of their several decades-long struggle to rid the Assam of foreign nationals. For them, this appears to be the beginning of a closure of an issue that has bogged Assam since Independence. Whether it would really be a closure remains to be seen, especially because of the immense humanitarian dimensions involved in making lakhs of people Stateless. But as of now, one notices a major change in the AASU’s usual rhetoric which appears quite toned down and accommodative, especially because it would like to take along with it all the stakeholders in the process, including minority organisations which it had long considered as enemies.

Now that doubts about the citizenship of lakhs of pre-1971 Muslim immigrants have been cleared, the AASU would obviously need their support to resist what is being seen by many as an onslaught on the status of the Assamese language by the rising number of Bengali speakers in the state. As per the 2011 language census, the number of Assamese speakers has decreased to 48 per cent from 58 per cent in 1991 while Bengali speakers have increased from 22 per cent (1991) to 30 per cent.

Although several minority organisations of Assam have expressed their doubts about the NRC process, the overall response to the publication of the NRC’s final draft has been quite positive. In most of the local TV shows, leaders of these organisations have welcomed the NRC and have expressed the hope that in the final list, the names of most of those who do not figure now would be included. It appears that the apprehensions that there would be a large-scale deletion of names in the Bengali-dominated areas of the Barak and Brahmaputra Valley have not been substantiated by the final NRC list.

The article further mentions that the highest number of deletions, percentage wise, has been in the districts of Nagaon, Darrang, Bongaigaon and Kamrup Metro, where it ranges from 25 to 31 per cent, Darrang district heading the list. By contrast, the deletion figures are substantially less in districts like Morigaon, Karimganj, Goalpara, Barpeta and Cachar which have always been seen as dominated by illegal infiltrators from Bangladesh.

Another reason why the NRC figures have not created a stir is the fact that most of the pre-1971 immigrants of East Pakistan/ Bangladesh origin who have been living all these years with the tag of a foreigner have now found a place in the citizens’ register. The Deputy Speaker of the Assam Assembly, Dilip Kumar Paul, summed up this feeling of relief when he said that despite his wife’s name not figuring in the list, he was happy that the people of Cachar and the Barak Valley, who have long carried the “Bangladeshi tag”, are now finally rid of it. The NRC, he said, has finally put the seal of citizenship on 90 per cent of the people of Barak Valley. This is also true of most of the other districts of the Brahmaputra and Barak Valleys where large masses of people long seen as illegal migrants from Bangladesh and looked upon with suspicion have now been cleared of stigma and accepted as citizens at par with the State’s indigenous people. This is certainly a great relief for these people and partly explains the lack of tension in the State following the publication of the NRC.

It needs to be seen that for lakhs of immigrants, both Muslims and Hindus, the NRC has put a final seal on their citizenship and this is a great closure for them. In this context, it is significant that organisations like the Assam Sanmilita Mahasangha, which has moved the Supreme Court for 1951 to be the cut-off year instead of 1971, have accused the AASU and the Assam Sahitya Sabha of betraying the Assamese cause by helping lakhs of “foreigners” to get citizenship.

Amidst concerns, WhatsApp delays implementation of its new privacy policy

Amidst concerns, WhatsApp delays implementation of its new privacy policy

Training on mushroom

Assam: How to cultivate mushroom? Aaranyak shows ways to women in Karbi Anglong

Boost to connectivity: SpiceJet announces daily non-stop flight between Delhi, Sikkim

Boost to connectivity: SpiceJet announces daily non-stop flight between Delhi, Sikkim

Mizoram: Assam Rifles seize heroin worth over Rs 40 lakh in Champhai

Mizoram: Assam Rifles seize heroin worth over Rs 40 lakh in Champhai

NORTHEAST NOW

Northeast Now is a multi-app based hyper-regional bilingual news portal. Led by a group of professionals, the digital news platform covers every inch of the eight states of northeast India and the five neighbouring countries. It is the first of its kind new media initiative in the northeast, and is based in Guwahati. As the political dynamics in the northeast is intricate and fluid, Northeast Now is always politically neutral.

 
Our Properties
 
  • NORTHEAST NOW ASSAMESE
  • NORTHEAST JOBS
  • NORTHEAST TENDERS
  • INNFINITY
  • About Us
  • Copyright Policy
  • Disclaimer
  • Authors
  • Career
  • Contact Us

© 2019 - Maintained by EZEN Software & Technology Pvt. Ltd

No Result
View All Result
  • HOME
  • NORTH EAST
    • Assam
    • Meghalaya
    • Tripura
    • Mizoram
    • Manipur
    • Nagaland
    • Arunachal
    • Sikkim
  • Neighbours
    • Nepal
    • Bhutan
    • China
    • Myanmar
    • Bangladesh
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Sports
  • Environment
  • Citizen Journalists
  • Opinion

© 2019 - Maintained by EZEN Software & Technology Pvt. Ltd