Opinion Assam’s D-voter debate: Koch-Rajbongshis find relief, and rightly so. But what about state’s Muslim communities?

The D-voter category was created in 1997 by the then Assam Gana Parishad (AGP) government, which is now an ally of the ruling BJP. The Congress party, which was in power for 15 years after the D-voter category was introduced, did not make any effort to scrap it.

Over the decades, many communities have received relief from the clutches of the D-voter category, the latest being the Koch-Rajbongshis. However, Muslims continue to bear the brunt of this discriminatory system.

At the initial stage, the letter “D” is marked by the Border Police in the voter list against the names of individuals whose electoral legitimacy is “doubted”. This doubt, however, is often not devoid of bias and prejudice. The preconceived notions about Muslims are further reinforced by the lack of representation of the community in the police force and higher judiciary. For example, as of now, there is not a single Muslim judge in the Gauhati High Court, despite Assam having a 35 per cent Muslim population.

The letter “D” denies a person the right to vote. The only way to remove the “D” from the voter list is to approach the FT. In the FT, victims often need to hire advocates, which can be expensive, especially for the economically disadvantaged. Many cases drag on for years, leaving the poor in dire situations. In many reported cases, D-voters have been declared foreigners for minor spelling errors, age discrepancies, surname differences among family members in documents such as voter lists, or other negligible incongruities in official documents.

In some cases, the Supreme Court has taken note of the discrepancies and reinstated the victim’s citizenship. For instance, in the case of Mohd. Rahim Ali, who was labelled a “foreigner” by a sub-inspector in 2002, the Supreme Court quashed all charges, calling the process “a grave miscarriage of justice”. However, very few can afford to reach the higher judiciary, leaving most to languish in detention camps or live in fear of imminent arrest.

Apart from Muslims, especially Miya Muslims, the D-voter category has affected other communities such as Bengali Hindus, Nepalis (also known as Gorkhas), and Koch Rajbongshis, among others. The enactment of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (2019) guaranteed citizenship to Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Parsis, Buddhists, and Jains who migrated to India from neighbouring countries.

In 2021, many D-voter cases against the Nepali community were also withdrawn, offering relief to affected individuals.

Furthermore, on July 25, 2024, the Assam government ordered the Border Police not to directly forward cases of non-Muslims who entered India before 2014 to the FTs but rather asked them to encourage the entrants to apply for citizenship under the CAA. This decision provided relief to many non-Muslims, especially Bengali Hindus, who constituted a significant portion of D-voter victims. The recent decision by Sarma to grant relief to the Rajbongshis is another step in the same direction.

However, in this long list of people who got relief from the government, and rightfully so, Muslims are nowhere. To truly implement PM Modi’s slogan of sabka saath sabka vikas, Muslims should be treated just like other communities, not as outsiders — foreign to the body politic of the country.

The writer teaches Sociology at Jamia Milia Islamia University, New Delhi