Assam: Order Declaring 40-year-Old Man As Undocumented Immigrant Overturned By Gauhati HC

GUWAHATI: An order declaring a 40-year-old resident of Nagaon, Assam, an undocumented immigrant was overturned by the Gauhati High Court because the tribunal that issued it did not consider evidence that was on file, according to the court.

Justices Achintya Malla Bujor Barua and Arun Dev Choudhury, sitting as a divisional bench, cited the evidence on Tuesday and ruled that Md. Jamir Ali, who entered Assam after March 24, 1971, the cutoff date for identifying undocumented immigrants, was wrongly labelled a foreigner.

Following a decades-long drive against undocumented immigrants that fanned fears of citizenship loss and protracted detention, the National Register of Citizens (NRC) disqualified 1.9 million of the 33 million applicants in August 2019.

1951 saw the launch of the NRC in Assam. Immigrants without legal status were removed from citizenship rolls after an update in 2019 that did this. After becoming an unauthorised immigrant in June 2018, Ali filed a petition with the Supreme Court. In 2009, he was the subject of a case that was filed against him.

According to the court, the petitioner proved his connection to Abbas Ali by citing the fact that Abbas Ali was his father and that he was listed on the 1965 voter list. The Tribunal "did not take note of the elements via which the link was established," the court ruled.

The petitioner's mother, Haliman Nessa, 80, testified in court that Md. Jamir Ali was due at the time her husband passed away. "My husband lived in the village of Goroimari permanently. He expired before Jamir was born. On the 1965 voter list, my name and the name of my husband were both listed. My children and I are an Indian family as a whole. To back up their assertions, the family supplied supporting paperwork.

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