Those left out of NRC not to be detained: govt

The government said yesterday that those left out of the final National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam will not be detained till they “exhaust” all remedies available under law.Such people can appeal to the Foreign Tribunals within 120 days, the federal home ministry said, stressing that they will continue to enjoy all their rights as earlier, like other citizens.“The affected persons will continue to enjoy rights like right to employment, education, property etc,” ministry spokesperson Vasudha Gupta said in a tweet.In another tweet, she said: “The state government has also made necessary arrangements to provide legal aid to the needy people amongst those excluded from NRC final list, by providing all assistance through the District Legal Services Authorities (DLSA).”The ministry said adequate judicial process is available to the affected people to appeal to Foreigners Tribunal within 120 days from August 31, adding “to facilitate appeal, 200 new FTs will functional from today (Monday), in addition to 100 already existing”.In the final NRC list released on Saturday, 30.1mn people were found eligible to be included, while more than 1.9mn were left out.Those left out are mostly Bengali Hindu refugees who came to Assam before 1971, or people who couldn’t submit the necessary documents.The foreign ministry also defended the controversial citizenship register after criticism from the United Nations, saying the almost 2mn people excluded from the list would not become “stateless”.The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has said the NRC was necessary to detect “foreign infiltrators”.Critics say it is being used by the BJP to push a Hindu nationalist agenda and marginalise the state’s large minority of Muslims – many who fled there when East Pakistan broke from Islamabad in 1971 to become Bangladesh.Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, had on Sunday called on New Delhi to avoid stripping people of their nationality, saying it “would be an enormous blow to global efforts to eradicate statelessness”.But foreign ministry spokesman Raveesh Kumar defended the process, saying the NRC “does not make the excluded person ‘stateless’” and any decisions taken would be consistent with Indian law and its “democratic traditions”.“It (the NRC) also does not make him or her a ‘foreigner’, within the legal meaning of the term,” Kumar said in a statement released late Sunday.“For those who are not in the final list, (they) will not be detained and will continue to enjoy all the rights as before until they have exhausted all the remedies available under the law.”Assam is largely surrounded by Bangladesh and has long seen influxes of migrants – even during Britain’s colonial rule.Critics have said the NRC process reflects the BJP’s goal to serve Hindus, with a large chunk of those excluded expected to be Muslims.But there has been growing outrage among local BJP leaders, who claim many Bengali-speaking Hindus – a key vote bank for the party – had also been left off the list.Home Affairs Minister Amit Shah is expected to visit Assam today, with the local BJP leadership set to call for his government to pass legislation to protect the rights of what it says are genuine citizens excluded from the list.In January the lower house Lok Sabha passed legislation that would grant citizenship to people who moved to India as recently as six years ago – as long as they are not Muslims.It is not yet clear what will happen to people who have exhausted their legal avenues.In theory, they can be placed in one of six detention centres with a view to possible deportation to Bangladesh.Bangladesh’s Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan said that the NRC is an “internal matter of India”, adding: “No Bangladeshi has moved to India after 1971.”