Daily Times

Sir: Since 2010, India has been enumerating the population in its Assam state to identify illegally-residing Bangladeshis, Afghanis and Pakistanis. Now, Registrar General of India has announced that he has identified 40.7 lakh ‘illegal’ inhabitants of Assam (12% of Assam’s total population).

The next National-Register-of-India announcement is due on September 31, with the finally announcement scheduled for December 31. The ‘illegals’ will have no fundamental rights as Indian citizens after the December 31 deadline. About 3.9 million people had applied for the inclusion of their names in the Register of Citizenship. These people will be deported to their native countries. Most of them are Muslims and have been going to and fro across Assam and Bangladesh’s porous border since before partition.

The aggrieved ‘illegal’ Hindus could apply for review to ‘foreigners’ tribunals (barring Afghanis and Pakistanis).These sluggish tribunals disposed, on average, 150 applications during the past 35 years. The register format is intended to create a digitised citizen, showing his genealogy (family tree) since 1951 or earlier. It is impossible for many of the Muslim settlers to produce documented records of their forbears from over fifty years ago.

This registration exercise is a ploy to create a Hindu Akhand Bharat. The tensions may result in division of Assam into the Hindu-dominated Barak Valley, and the greater Brahmaputra Valley. Majority of Assamese speakers including Muslims, Hindus, and many other groups live in the latter.

Adolf Hitler coined excuses to drive Jews out of Germany. Similarly the Modi government is flushing out mostly Muslim Bangladeshis and Afghanis from Assam. The UN high Commission for Refugees should take notice of this disastrous situation before it is too late.

ZAHIDA PARVEEN

Rawalpindi

Published in Daily Times, August 2^nd 2018.