Nrc curious pursuit by supreme court

Nrc curious pursuit by supreme court

Is court stepping into executive’s terrain?
The Supreme Court’s acerbic observation that the government seems to be bent on procrastinating the process of compiling Assam’s National Register of Citizens (NRC), and insistence that officials of the state government and police forces engaged in the NRC process cannot be released for election duty are curious, to say the least. The implication is that the government of India, duly elected by the people of India and accountable to them, is not committed to what it and the court agree is a task of national importance, whereas the apex court is determined to complete it. This, we submit with all due respect, is not a tenable proposition.

Determining who is a citizen and who is not is fraught. Apart from questions of legality, there are issues of human rights, international relations and law and order at stake. People who are determined to be non-citizens are being interred in camps that invite comparison with concentration camps. The number of documents on the basis of which citizenship is to be determined has undergone change. In a country where literacy has a recent history but concentrated ownership of land has a long one, it was always going to be difficult even for legitimate but landless and unlettered citizens to prove their citizenship. Add lack of trust, religious animosity and administrative incompetence — and the result is a process that has all the potential for a violent tragedy. It is up to the executive to handle this and any other contingency that could arise as a result of a race to meet an arbitrary deadline of July 31, 2019, to complete the process.

Justice Rohinton Nariman had observed, in a judgment in December 2014, that Parliament has not created a law on refugees but that the Section 6A introduced in the Citizenship Act following the Assam Accord contained elements recognising refugees, who were to be granted citizenship. Whether such provisions would apply to some, at least, of those excluded from the NRC is a key question that should be settled before completion of NRC. The Supreme Court would do well to not rush the NRC process.