Name ‘missing’ in voter list, Assam woman’s 6 year ordeal: Labelled foreigner, sent to detention camp

A case was registered under the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act the following year, but it was only in 2015 that she received a notice from the Foreigners’ Tribunal. On March 20, 2017, the tribunal declared her a “foreigner” who had entered the country after March 25, 1971.

Six years on, it has been established that the Dulubi Bibi in the 1997 electoral roll was the same person as Dulabjan Begum in the 1993 voter list, and details of her father and grandfather could be traced back to the 1965 voter lists.

In the interim, she spent two years in a detention camp in Silchar before she was released on bail on April 27, 2020. “After I was released, I had to keep travelling up and down from Silchar by myself, without my husband, because it was too expensive for both of us,” she said, adding that each trip cost her around Rs 600.

After she was declared a foreigner in 2017, Bibi approached the Gauhati High Court, armed with voter lists going back to 1965 that contained the names of her grandfather and father. Her grandfather’s name appeared as Majmil Ali in the 1965 voter list. The 1985 voter list contained the name of her father as Sirai Mia Laskar, son of Majmil Ali Laskar, while the 1993 voter list referred to him as Sirai Mia, son of Majmil Ali. The 1993 voter list referred to her as Dolobjan Begum, daughter of Sirai Mia.

Bibi pointed to this continuity to prove that she is an Indian citizen.

The High Court, in April, acknowledged that if this continuity were confirmed, she would have discharged the burden of proof. However, the court stated that it first had to be confirmed whether Majmil Ali and Majmil Ali Laskar, Sirai Mia and Sirai Mia Laskar, and Dolobjan Begum and Dulubi Bibi — different names in the different voter lists — were the same people. The court remanded the matter back to the tribunal to examine and verify what Bibi was referring to, and pass an order accordingly.

In an order dated October 7, the Foreigners’ Tribunal 3 in Silchar stated that on the basis of documents submitted, it found “very much detailed information of relationship of (Bibi’s) family members, which reveals the continuity of the family”. It declared that she “is a Citizen of India born out of Indian Citizens living in Indian soil”.

Silchar-based social activist Kamal Chakraborty, who assisted Bibi with her case, said: “The problem is inconsistencies in different voter lists. Across the country, people have never seen what their names are listed as in voting lists, but this has huge consequences for people whose citizenship is under the scanner.”

Citizenship is a contentious issue in Assam, where allegations often emerge that the state has a large number of “illegal immigrants” from Bangladesh. In August 2019, an updated National Register of Citizens was published in an effort to identify “foreigners”, which left out 19 lakh people. Section 6A of the Citizenship Act establishes March 24, 1971 as the cut-off date for entry into the state, meaning that those who came afterwards would be considered “illegal immigrants”. The final NRC was also conducted with this cut-off date.

According to government data, as of March 15 this year, there were 185 “declared foreign nationals to be deported” lodged in the dedicated “detention centres” for “illegal foreigners” in Goalpara.