- The Supreme Court ruled citizenship determination must be fair and just
- The court set aside Gauhati High Court and tribunal rulings against 27 individuals
- No coercive action can be taken against the 27 until fresh tribunal hearings occur
The process of determining citizenship or declaring someone a foreigner should be fair, the Supreme Court said Monday in a critical judgement on the citizenship status of 27 individuals who had been labelled 'foreigners' by tribunals in Assam. "Citizenship and foreigner status occupy a field of high constitutional and legal significance," the court observed.
Simultaneously, the court also admitted the Indian government had an appreciable interest in preventing individuals' illegal claims to citizenship, noting, "The State has a legitimate and compelling interest in ensuring that persons who are not legally entitled to claim Indian citizenship do not secure such status by misuse of process, by false claim or delays…"
However, in the final analysis, the court said that interest cannot override judicial fairness.
The top court then set aside judgements passed down by the Gauhati High Court and the tribunals, and stressed that no coercive action could be taken against the 27 individuals who had been labelled 'foreigners' until another hearing is held by the tribunals.
Of the 27, Sabitri Dey, Ajbahar Ali, Md Akbar Ali, Abeda Khatun, and Anowara Khatun had approached the top court alleging that they had been declared foreigners on hyper-technical grounds, such as typos and minor mismatches in the spellings of their names on old voter lists.
While the bench of Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Sandeep Mehta offered them some relief, it also clarified that it had not examined the evidence to ascertain the citizenship of the petitioners.
Dey and others had individually challenged foreigner-status rulings before the Gauhati High Court and the Supreme Court in a series of connected citizenship-related litigations against the Indian government. These cases generally originated from orders passed by various Foreigners Tribunals in Assam.
The petitioners approached the top court to establish their Indian citizenship by producing historical lineage linkages, such as pre-1971 legacy data, voter lists, and land records.
The Supreme Court's judgement came after another bench in June prevented the deportation of five women who had been declared 'foreigners' by the tribunals.
The top court granted interim relief in that case as well and issued notices to the Centre, the Assam government, and the Election Commission after the women argued they were being deported despite having produced the required documents. Some also said they had been affected by inconsistencies in the spelling of their names in government records.
That judgement, legal experts noted, opened the door to a broader question about the standard of evaluation of citizenship claims by Assam's Foreigners Tribunals.
