- The Gauhati High Court ruled the petitioner failed to prove Indian citizenship with 16 documents
- The petitioner challenged a 2019 Foreigners Tribunal order declaring him a foreigner
- Documents included 1951 NRC, voter lists, land records, PAN, voter IDs, and school certificate
In a landmark judgement, the Gauhati High Court, hearing a writ petition, stated that the petitioner had exhibited 16 documents to prove his citizenship but couldn't establish that he is an Indian citizen.
The high court observed that the 16 documents in this case don't appear to help the petitioner establish that he is not a foreigner but an Indian Citizen, under Section 9 of the Foreigners Act, 1964.
The order noted that the onus of proving citizenship lies with the person if a question arises about whether they are a foreigner.
This order was passed by the bench of justices Kalyan Rai Surana and Shamima Jahan on June 30.
"Though the petitioner has exhibited 16 documents as exhibits, the same does not help the petitioner to establish that he has been able to discharge his burden as required under Section 9...to prove that he is not a foreigner but an Indian citizen," the order said.
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The case pertained to a petition filed by Aminul Hoque, who had challenged the February 28, 2019, order of the Foreigners Tribunal, Guwahati, declaring him a foreigner.
Hoque had submitted copies of the 1951 National Register of Citizens (NRC), which recorded the names of his grandparents and father, certified copies of voter lists showing his parents' and his names from 1966 to 2017, land purchase documents from 1973, a Permanent Account Number (PAN), voter IDs, and a school certificate.
The Assam NRC was completed in 2019 but is yet to be notified. It was supposed to be the document to decide who is a genuine Indian citizen and who is an illegal immigrant.
The petitioner claimed that his family had been residing in Assam for generations.
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His father appeared in court and identified the former as his son. But the court held that mere oral evidence without documentary evidence -- "which is admissible and relevant" -- was insufficient to prove the two are linked.
A foreigners' tribunal in Assam's Kamrup declared Hoque a foreigner in February 2019. He later moved to the high court.
His lawyer had submitted that the petitioner was a migrant worker, and he was declared a foreigner because of discrepancies in the names of his father and grandfather in some documents.
"At this juncture, notwithstanding that the father of the petitioner has four names, viz., Mohiruddin Sheikh, Mahruddin Sheikh, Mohiruddin, Mohir Uddin, the Court does not take a serious note of the spelling discrepancies in the names of the grandfather and father of the petitioner, which appear on a comparative reading of the hereinbefore referred voters' lists. Thus, even after taking into account that the father of Mohiruddin Sheikh, Mahruddin Sheikh, Mohiruddin and Mohir Uddin is shown to be Pasan Ali, but the petitioner has failed to show that all the projected members of the family -- Pasan Ali or Mohiruddin or Aminul Hoque, the petitioner are not continuously together in all the voters lists of three villages, i.e. Dobakura, Ghugudoba and Hashdoba," the bench said.
"It appears that to fill up the gaps, the defence of the petitioner is structured around the exhibited voters' lists. Without the support of any document, it has been argued that there was a shifting of the family from Dobakura to Ghugudoba and Ghugudoba to Hashdoba. To match the names in the voter's lists, it has been argued that there was a mistake in the recording of names in the voter lists," it said.
The court added that the petitioner had exhibited the school certificate issued by the headmaster of Hashdoba Anchalik High School on 20.10.2017, stating that the student had left school in 1999. The author of the certificate had not deposed to support the certificate, it said.
