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The Hindu
14 hours ago
- Politics
- The Hindu
Cause and effect: On human rights, citizenship cases
Concerns surrounding citizenship faced by sections of society in India's border States have come to the fore again with courts stepping in to provide temporary relief to harassed individuals. The issues arising from these cases are far from settled. On June 24, 2025, the Supreme Court of India stayed the deportation of Jaynab Bibi who was labelled a 'foreigner', first by the Foreigners' Tribunal in Assam, and then by the Gauhati High Court. Despite hailing from a family whose members have lived in Assam for generations, and furnishing all documents, she has had to run from pillar to post to prove that she is an Indian citizen. A Bench of Justices K.V. Viswanathan and N. Kotiswar Singh ordered the Union government not to take any coercive steps against Ms. Bibi, till the next hearing in August. In the case of Rakshanda Rashid, the High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh ordered the Union Home Secretary to repatriate the 63-year-old housewife to India. She was deported to Pakistan following the crackdown against Pakistani nationals after the Pahalgam terror attack in April. Ms. Rashid, a Pakistani national, had been staying in Jammu for the past 38 years with her husband and two children, and had a long-term visa. Her application for citizenship in 1996 is yet to be processed. In his order, High Court judge Rahul Bharti said human rights are the most sacrosanct component of a human life and that there are times when a court has to respond 'SOS like' without going into the merits and demerits of a case, which can be decided on in due course of time. The lawyers for Ms. Bibi referred to Md. Rahim Ali @ Abdur Rahim vs The State Of Assam in 2024 in which the Supreme Court touched on the manner in which people in Assam were being randomly suspected as foreigners without any cogent evidence. '...[I]t is well settled that suspicion, however high it may be, can under no circumstances, be held to be a substitute for legal evidence,' it said, laying down the due process to be followed when an individual is declared a foreigner. The Citizenship (Amendment) Act of 2019, by offering citizenship to six non-Muslim communities in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh, adopted a narrow and arbitrary view of 'religious persecution'. The innate violence in the rhetoric of senior Bharatiya Janata Party Chief Ministers such as Yogi Adityanath and Himanta Biswa Sarma against minorities has heightened the anxiety felt by the marginalised, poor, sometimes undocumented, communities. Governments must uphold human rights and dignity of the individual, as provided for under the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and not have to be nudged by courts.
Scroll.in
18 hours ago
- Politics
- Scroll.in
Supreme Court halts deportation of woman declared foreigner in Assam
The Supreme Court on Tuesday temporarily stayed the deportation of a woman who was declared a foreigner by Assam's Foreigners Tribunal in 2017. The Guahati High Court had on February 17 dismissed a petition by the woman, Jaynab Bibi, challenging the tribunal's order. On Tuesday, a bench of Justices Ujjal Bhuyan and Justice Vinod Chandran issued a notice on Bibi's plea against the High Court order. The matter will be heard next on August 25. Bibi has told the court that she is an Indian citizen who was born and raised in Assam's Nagaon district, The Hindu reported. She presented before the court the 1951 National Register of Citizens list, and the voter lists from 1965 and 1970, all of which included her grandfather's name. She also pointed out that subsequent voters' lists in 1989 and 1997 had her parents' names while those from 2016 and 2018 had her husband's name, the newspaper reported. Her petition before the Supreme Court claimed that the tribunal ignored these key pieces of evidence and declared Bibi a foreigner in an 'arbitrary and mechanical manner'. The Foreigners Tribunals in Assam are quasi-judicial bodies that adjudicate on matters of citizenship. They have been accused of arbitrariness and bias, and declaring people foreigners on the basis of minor spelling mistakes, a lack of documents or lapses in memory. As part of a sweeping crackdown on 'declared foreigners', the Assam government has forced over 300 people over the border into Bangladesh since May – many of whom claim they are Indian citizens. On May 20, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said that the state was 'duty-bound to protect the interests' of Assam and ' expel all illegal immigrants from the state through any means and as per directions of Supreme Court'. The chief minister appeared to be referring to the court's February 4 ruling that the state must deport persons who had been declared foreign nationals.
