Tribune News Service
New Delhi, September 1
The government today said all those who did not figure on the final National Register of Citizens (NRC) list in Assam “will not be detained and will continue to enjoy all the rights as before till they have exhausted all the remedies available under the law”.
A statement by Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Raveesh Kumar made three points: No detention, enjoyment of rights till all appeals are exhausted and no ownership of the process by the government. It was not clear whether his assurance of no detention would continue ad infinitum or till the stateless persons identified by the NRC have exhausted all remedies under the law.
The final NRC list has excluded over 19 lakh people. Most of them are said to be Bengali speaking with the unspoken assumption being that they were undocumented migrants from Bangladesh. However, Bangladesh, which was supposed to be the final destination of the stateless people identified by the NRC, has already washed its hands of the issue on the basis of a statement by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar.
Bangladesh Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen on Saturday said he did not think those excluded from the final NRC list were Bangladeshis and referred to the statement by Jaishankar on a recent visit to Dhaka that this was India’s internal matter. However, that still leaves criticism about India creating the largest group of stateless persons in one fell swoop.
Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said today that “any process that could leave large numbers of people without a nationality would be an enormous blow to global efforts to eradicate statelessness”. He urged India to “ensure no one ends up stateless, including by ensuring adequate access to information, legal aid and legal recourse in accordance with the highest standards of due process”.
Most of Kumar’s statement was aimed at blunting that criticism by giving a run-order of the process which, he said, preceded the formation of Modi government 1.0. “The apex court of the land has itself set the deadlines for all steps that have been taken so far. The Supreme Court had mandated the government to deliver on the commitment in 2013. This led to the process of updating the NRC in Assam in 2015. The updation of the NRC is a statutory, transparent, legal process mandated by the Supreme Court,” he observed.
‘Process entirely court-driven, predates Modi govt’
This is not an executive-driven process, but one being monitored by the Supreme Court directly and the government is acting in accordance with the directives issued by the court. This entire process preceded the formation of Modi government 1.0. — Raveesh Kumar, MEA spokesperson
from The Tribune https://ift.tt/30QNuar
via Today’s News Headlines
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