‘Is this justice?’ How delay in registration cost a Bengali Muslim woman in Assam her citizenship

On the morning of January 11, I arrived at Begum Zan’s home in Assam’s Barpeta district.

I came bearing bad news.

The 54-year-old woman was busy with her household chores in Chengulia, a village on the banks of the Beki river. Her husband, Mansur Ali, had gone fishing.

Two days ago, unknown to Zan, the Gauhati High Court had dismissed her appeal and struck down her citizenship. The reason: she had failed to enroll herself at the foreigners’ regional registration office in time.

“It was during the [first Covid-19] lockdown,” said Zan, as she broke down. “We should have gone for the hearing. But I didn’t know the urgency and our lawyer told us of the deadline three months later.”

Though previous Gauhati High Court orders had been more lenient in similar cases, the two-judge bench hearing her case took a different view.

In doing so, they cited the landmark Supreme Court order that upheld Section 6A of the Citizenship Act, 1955, which devised a framework for awarding citizenship to migrants to Assam. The five-judge bench upheld the section 4:1 in October last year.

Curiously, the Gauhati High Court cited the lone dissenting opinion of Justice JB Pardiwala to declare Zan a foreigner.

“Is it even justice that for a delay in registration, she will lose...

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