Opinion BJP’s infiltration distraction: Using Jharkhand to hide failures in Assam

Securing international borders, detection and deportation of foreigners are all in the Centre’s domain. I hope people of Jharkhand see through BJP’s plan and hold the party accountable.

November 15, 2024 11:13 AM IST First published on: Nov 11, 2024 at 05:35 PM IST

As we approach the state assembly elections, the BJP is raking up the issue of infiltration aggressively. Securing international borders, detection and deportation of foreigners are all in the Centre’s domain. Yet, it has become an issue in a state election. The loudest voice in this campaign is that of the CM of a state which has been a laboratory for the BJP on the issue of infiltration. There are important lessons from Assam that I hope the people of Jharkhand will keep in mind.

Infiltration sparks concern among genuine citizens about resource depletion, marginalisation, and cultural dilution. These fears were at the root of the six-year-long agitation in Assam which finally culminated into the Assam Accord in 1985. The Accord struck a delicate balance in protecting the rights of those living in apprehension of outsiders and those who feared becoming stateless for reasons beyond their control like the Partition and the Bangladesh Liberation Movement.

As the BJP plays up infiltration in Jharkhand, it must realise that the Assam experience has shown the government’s inability to resolve the issue and the serious challenges it poses for the people and those in power. The past and present governments at the Centre had to fall back on updating the National Register of Citizens (NRC) for Assam to detect the non-citizens despite the fact that Assam with foreigners’ tribunals and an entire police force deployed for the job together could not effectively solve the issue of infiltration.

Section 14A of the Citizenship Act 1955 empowers the central government to mandate citizen registration and issue national identity cards. However, the onus of providing legal documentation lay with individuals, sparking protests once the NRC pilot phase began in 2010. Initially conceived in 2005 as a solution for Assam, the process didn’t gain traction till the Supreme Court intervened in 2013 to monitor the process. Over 33 million residents of Assam faced the daunting task of submitting complex applications and numerous documents to prove their citizenship. This costly endeavour, exceeding Rs 1600 crore, strained state government resources and left many vulnerable individuals, who had lost their documents, in natural calamities, feeling helpless.

This process that spanned over five years was one of the lengthiest, costliest and tumultuous administrative exercises conducted in India to settle the issue of illegal migrants and citizenship. But it fell prey to politics. Six years have passed since the process was completed and yet the double engine sarkar has kept it hanging.

Therefore, the first question the BJP must answer is why it has abandoned the NRC that sought to resolve the problem of infiltration in Assam. The NRC, finalised in December 2019, remains unofficial due to the Registrar General of India withholding its notification, defying both legal mandates and Supreme Court directives. The political significance lies in the number of exclusions. The initial draft, released in December 2017, excluded approximately 40 lakh individuals. And since then, the word ghuspethia became the BJP’s pet word. With their party’s eye on the Lok Sabha elections of 2019, it alleged that there were 40 lakhs ghuspethias in one state. The dampener, however, was the final list of the NRC released in August 2019 which brought down the number of people excluded to 19 lakh — most of them are reported to be from the majority community.

The house of cards immediately collapsed — the state government as well as the Centre began to disown and discredit the NRC process. The Supreme Court appointed co-ordinator, conducting the process, was accused of dereliction of duty. Several review petitions were filed in the court asking to redo the process in certain districts sharing international borders which the court decisively rejected.

The NRC remains a contentious issue. The Assam government selectively uses the NRC without fully validating it — the recent release of biometric data for those included in the updated NRC, after a five-year delay, is an example. This conundrum has put the government in a difficult position, leaving Assam in a state of citizenship limbo. The NRC’s failure has exacerbated divisions in Assam, with the government creating various categories of citizens, like “original inhabitants” and “kilonjias”. To appease those seeking a solution to infiltration, the government has resorted to unconstitutional and communal measures.

The recent delimitation process, based on outdated data and without proper consultation, was designed to mask the NRC’s failure rather than reflect population changes.

A failed NRC in Assam flies in the face of the hyperbole on infiltration in Jharkhand. The Assam CM has no answers other than creating smoke screens to hide the failure to implement the NRC in Assam. As people of Jharkhand go to vote, I hope they can hold the Centre as opposed to the state accountable for infiltration, if any, and raise valid questions on the failed NRC of Assam before voting on this issue of infiltration.

The writer is a TMC Rajya Sabha member.