Set 20,2021: While the Registrar General of India has not yet issued a notification on Assam’s National Register of Citizens (NRC) to make it a legal document, a Foreigners’ Tribunal has gone ahead and recorded it as the “final NRC” while declaring a man to be Indian.
Hearing a case against one Bikram Singha of Jamirala village whose name figured in the NRC list, member of FT-II in Karimganj town Sishir Dey said, “…there is no doubt that this NRC Assam published in 2019 is nothing but Final NRC..”
The FT-II’s ‘order cum opinion’ comes just days after Assam’s Political (B) Department had on September 4 asked the FTs not to pass “consequential orders/directions” and stick to giving an “opinion” as mandated by the Foreigners (Tribunals) Order, 1964. The letter to the FTs followed an assessment by the State’s Judicial Department of the “opinions” given by the members in the case of people suspected to be foreigners or doubtful voters.
The Assam police’s Border wing had, in May 2008, filed a case against Mr. Singha, of Jamirala village under the Patherkandi Assembly constituency of southern Assam’s Karimganj district. The man, marked a D or ‘doubtful voter’, remained untraced until June 28 and appeared before the Foreigners’ Tribunal-II (FT-II) in Karimganj town two months later, seeking time to return from Bengaluru where he was working.
Mr. Singha produced before the FT-II several documents to prove his Indian citizenship.
