Countrywide NRC- Its Implications

Recently, Union home minister said in Parliament that the Nation Register of Citizens (NRC) would be prepared for every state in the country. 

Background

• The National Register of Citizens (NRC) is a register containing names of all genuine Indian citizens. At present, only Assam has such a register. 
• The exercise may be extended to other states as well. Nagaland is already creating a similar database known as the Register of Indigenous Inhabitants. The Centre is planning to create a National Population Register (NPR), which will contain demographic and biometric details of citizens.
• National Register of Citizens, 1951 is a register prepared after the conduct of the Census of 1951.
• Purpose:To separate “illegal” immigrants and deport them.
• Nodal Agency:Registrar General and Census Commissioner India.

Aim

• Census and National Population Register is counting residents while the proposed NRC will count citizens. Its objective is to weed out non-citizens and deport them to their countries of origin or put them in detention camps.

Scope of NRC across India

• An amendment in the Foreigners (Tribunals) Order, 1964, issued by the central government on May 30 paves the way for expanding the scope of NRC beyond.
• The amended order empowers state governments and even district magistrates of all states and Union Territories to set up tribunals to identify a "foreigner" who is living in India illegally.

Implications of Nationwide NRC

• It puts an entire population under suspicion of alienage. Under the foreigners’ Act 1946, the burden of proof rests on the individual charged with being a foreigner. Moreover, Citizenship Act provides no mechanism for identifying aliens. With that justification can a state that does not have the ability to detect aliens or even to secure its borders against illegal immigrants, set out to find aliens by elimination? Elimination method is not the right approach.
• Cost of Authentication: Preparation of a countrywide NRC requires lot of resources. The Assam NRC is reported to have costed Rs 1600 crores. To prepare a countrywide NRC we need an estimated outlay of Rs 4.26 lakh crore. It would also need deployment of 1.33 crore officials when total number of government employees in India was 2.9 crore in 2011-12.
• Lot of time to prepare it: It is a regressive exercise and will take lot of time to prepare it.
• Building new detention centers that will be needed to incarcerate the excluded people.
• Panic among people: The necessary documents required to be included in NRC has created panic and fear in Assam and many committed suicides as they were not having the documents to prove their citizenship even when their ancestors have been living here for hundreds of years. If NRC done at national level it would have graver ramifications.
• Federal Imperative of seeking the consent of state governments: Many states in northeast are erupting in protest against NRC. It is a federal issue and requires consultations between states and the centre and it cannot be done on the whims of a particular political party that comes to party.
• Fraying plural social fabric of this nation: If the NRC carves out paths to statelessness for groups that are disfavoured, the citizenship Amendment Bill creates paths to citizenship for preferred groups. The implicit assumption in the NRC is that the infiltrators are Bangladeshis Muslims who must be disenfranchised as they have illegally acquired the citizenship. The citizenship Amendment Bill on the other hand promises citizenship to migrants belonging to all groups except Muslims – who will be eligible for fast-track citizenship because they are persecuted minorities in Afghanistan, Pajistan and Bangladesh. However, it does not offer the same to the victims of sectarian religious persecution in neighbouring countries, such as the Ahmadiyas or the Rohingyas. It is a hypocrisy on part of the state.

Modalities for Implementation of NRC

• Although citizenship rules say being born in India or having parents who were born in India are enough for the citizenship. The NRC also requires you or your parents to have been born before a certain cut-off date. In case of Assam, you have to prove that your ancestors entered India before March 24, 1971, the eve of the Bangladesh War. You can be born in India in 1971, to parents who crossed the border that year, and still be considered a foreigner at the age of 48.
• The Home Ministry is working on modalities to implement across the country the exercise to identify illegal immigrants for deportation.

Conclusion

Constitutionally, India is a political community whose citizens avow the idea of the nation as a civic entity, transcending ethnic differences. The NRC-CAB combination signals a transformative shift from a civic-national conception to an ethno-national conception of India, as a political community in which identity determines gradations of citizenship. Hence, the rationale for a nationwide register of citizens, its feasibility, and, above all, its moral legitimacy, is questionable