TIA Correspondent
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NEW DELHI: Fresh trouble is brewing for Muslims living in the border areas of Assam as their citizenship is all set to be verified once again.
The Supreme Court has admitted the Civil Writ Petition filed by Assam Public Works (APWs) that called for deletion of ‘excess voters’ from the electoral rolls ahead of the Assembly elections.
The writ petition has urged the Supreme Court to direct the Governments of India, Assam and Election Commission to identify and delete names of all illegal migrants from the latest rolls and to undertake and complete the exercise with outmost urgency, so as to ensure that the next Assembly polls are held on the basis of ‘corrected’ electoral rolls.
A three-member Bench of the Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice of India Justice S H Kapadia and comprising Justice Aftab Alam and Justice K S P Radhakrishnan over ruled the plea for more time submitted by the Central Government’s counsel.
APWs alleged that of 40 lakh excess voters are listed in the State voter list. It has sought intensive revision of rolls and deletion of names of suspected illegal migrants from the rolls. The Governments of India, Assam and the Election Commission of India are respondents in the petition that was filed in 2009.
The Government of India has requested for dismissal of the petition, contending that it was not strong enough and valid, while Assam Government too opposed the petition and countered the APW’s claim of unusually high increase of voters in the State.
APWs claimed that between 1972-1991, the percentage of increase of voters in Assam was more than 88 per cent, with an annual growth rate of 4.67 per cent.
According to Abhijit Sarma of APW, the Supreme Court has termed it as an important issue. The petitioner was represented by Praveen Swarup and Tejinder Singh Doabia.
APW has also sought an one-time operation by adopting the modality, as designed by the petitioner, so as to regularise all pre-March 5, 1971 Bangladeshi along with lineage, as Indian citizens and to identify the post-March 24, 1971 illegal migrants, as foreigners and delete their names from the electoral rolls, as ‘D’ Category voters, in substitution of the modality being proposed by the Government purportedly to update the National Register of Citizens 1951.
In its counter-affidavit, the State Government has stated that identification of people, who came before March 1971 is still in progress.
Assam is the second largest Muslim populated state of India (in terms of percentage) only after Jammu and Kashmir. Muslims constitute about thirty percent of the state population. They are historically concentrated in the south and west Assam in large numbers