Thousands In Lawyer Fees, Debts: A Nightmare Awaits Assam’s Poor Left Out NRC // Assams new detention centres
"Salman Khan Gets Bail For Rs 50,000,
A Labourer In Detention In Assam Has To Pay Rs 2 Lakh," an activist said,
pointing out the unfair burden on Assam's poor
The sole remaining
photograph of Hibaz Ali is a grainy image of his face squeezed into a framed
collage with a caption calling him a martyr. When the All Assam Minority
Students’ Association (AAMSU) presented this college to Ali’s aging parents,
Kaleshan and Lal Bano, they told them their son’s sacrifice would not go in
vain. That was in July 2010,
when Ali was one of four people who died when the police opened fire on
protestors demonstrating against the updation of Assam’s National Register of
Citizens (NRC) in the state’s Barpeta district.
Soon after Ali’s death, a
Congress Member of Parliament named Himanta Biswa Sarma visited the family and
promised a government job for a family member. Nine years later this
weekend, on August 20 2019, the final version of the NRC was published —
leaving 19 lakh of the state’s residents off the rolls. Congressman Sarma has
switched parties and now a state finance minister with the BJP and has demanded
a “re-verification” of the NRC claiming too many Hindus of Bengali ethnicity
have been left out. Ali’s father, Kaleshan and most of the family have made it
onto the NRC, but are still waiting to learn the fate of Kaleshan’s daughter
and daughter-in-law.
Funded
by the central government, the detention centre comes at a cost of
approximately Rs 450 million. These detention
centres are mostly in district jails. It is being expected
that lakhs of those not included in the NRC list will be declared foreigners
and be housed in these detention centres.
In sum, the process
appears to have achieved little beyond demonising so-called foreigners, and
further marginalising many of the state’s most vulnerable residents. The Home Ministry has
declared that those left off the NRC will have 120 days to appeal their cases
before the foreigner’s tribunal. But for Kaleshan, who has had to contend with
the grief of losing a child, and the uncertainty of a daughter losing her
citizenship, the NRC has brought only misery. “Poor people like us, who have nothing, are
going mad with fear,” he told HuffPost India. “What will they do, where will
they go? Nobody remembered my dead son.”
ECONOMIC BURDEN ON
ASSAM’S POOR
Assam’s obsessions
with so-called “outsiders” has set up an entire ecosystem of lawyers who have
significantly upped their fees for cases related to the NRC and the foreigner
tribunal processes. These are two separate processes, but going forward those left
off the NRC will need to appeal to foreigner tribunals. Suhas Chakma, director
of Delhi-based Rights and Risk Analysis Group, surveyed 62 people in Assam’s
Goalpara, Baksa and Kamrup districts prior to the publication of the NRC and
estimated that each family had spent Rs 19,000 in an average for just NRC
hearings.
From selling off
auto-rickshaws, livestock and orchards, to mortgaging land, most families have
lost their livelihoods in the process. Almost all families had to take loans.
Chakma pointed out that in comparison, the foreigner tribunal process will be
way more complicated and expensive, with these poor, uneducated people having
to hire lawyers... read more
