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Indians asked to prove citizenship
OUR CORRESPONDENT
Karimganj
June 15: “Are you an Indian?”
This preposterous question has been staring at Suptirani Dey,
a member of the Veterbond Anchalik Panchayat in Karimganj,
for the past month.
A tribunal governed by the Foreigners Act in the district
last month slapped a “quit notice” on her, alleging that she
is a Bangladeshi national and needs to provide “valid
documents” to prove that she is, well, an Indian.
The little detail that the tribunal seems to have forgotten
is that Dey could not have possibly contested the rural poll
had her name not been there on the electoral roll — an
undeniable proof of citizenship.
And Dey is not alone.
The Karimganj tribunal has sent similar notices — a “mass
quit notice” actually — asking at least 20 people to present
themselves before it on June 28 with all relevant documents
to prove that they are Indian citizens.
The tribunal’s move prompted the BJP to threaten an
agitation in the Barak Valley if the notices were not
revoked immediately.
Biswarup Bhattacharjee, a member of the BJP’s Karimganj
district committee, last night said such notices aimed only
at harassing people.
He said all the recipients of these notices were “very much
Indian citizens”.
One of them is Dhirendra Chandra Dey, a resident of the
sugarcane-growing village of Veterbond, where he has been
living since Independence.
Five other members of his extended family have also been
received the tribunal’s notices.
Dey had figured in the revised electoral rolls of 1966 and
in all the subsequent rolls.
He also got an affidavit of the ages of his eight children —
as registered in a judicial court in Karimganj town on
January 19, 1987 — to prove that all his family members were
“genuine Indian citizens”. But the tribunal maintains he is
a Bangladeshi.
Bhattacharjee said that with the scrapping of the Illegal
Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) had raised hopes that
genuine Indian citizens would not be harassed in the name of
a campaign against Bangladeshi infiltrators.
The fresh notices were served on these 20 people under the
Foreigners Act, 1946, which was revived after the burial of
the IM(DT) Act last year.
The BJP also demanded re-introduction of an 1949 act which
ensured that Hindus from then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh)
would not be thrown out of India on being branded
“foreigners”.
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