All U Need To Know About National Register of Citizens(NRC)

We, the people of India" mean citizens of India.

 This citizen of India is defined, identified, verified and distinguished from infiltrators under a set of three laws: the Citizenship Act of 1955 (amended many times; the latest version emerged in the recent Winter Session of Parliament), the Foreigners Act of 1946 and the Passport Act of 1920.
 
Every non-citizen living in India is an infiltrator, if she is not a tourist or diplomat, because India doesn't have a law to define a refugee. Tibetans, Sri Lankan Tamils and some other named groups of foreigners are refugees as the government of the day accorded them that status.

The Foreigners Act makes it a duty of the government to expel all infiltrators or illegal immigrants out of India. Since there is no law, there is no accurate estimate of how many illegal immigrants are living in India. Estimating the number of illegal immigrants is like guessing the amount of black money in circulation in the Indian economy -- the money exists, but it is out of official calculation and hence subject to speculation

What does NRC mean to you?

It depends on whether you are a resident of Assam, which has already had an National Register of Citizens(NRC)exercise, or whether you belong to another state.

While Assam is the only State to have an NRC first prepared in 1951 and finally updated in 2019, the proposed nationwide exercise would be a first for the rest of India.

On December 9,2019 when Home Minister Amit Shah told Parliament that a nationwide NRC is on the cards, he distinguished it from the new citizenship law and said the NRC will have no religious filter. It is unclear if the government will bring in a fresh law to mandate a nationwide NRC.

Why is Assam different?

In Assam, the NRC update was mandated by the Supre court Of India(SCI) in 2013

Assam has a history that is shaped by migration, and the protests there are against only CAA, not against NRC

 The Assam Accord, signed by the governments of Assam and India, and the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) and the All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad in 1985, after a six-year mass movement, essentially declared that a resident of Assam is an Indian citizen if she could prove her presence, or an ancestor’s presence, in Assam before March 25, 1971.

That is the cutoff date for NRC, which CAA extends to December 31, 2014 to non-Muslim migrants from three countries.

To prove their or their ancestors’ presence before 1971, applicants in Assam had to produce any one of 14 possible documents:

• 1951 NRC; or
• Electoral roll(s) up to March 24, 1971; or
• Anyone of 12 other kinds of papers, such as land & tenancy records; citizenship papers; passport; Board/University certificate.

Additionally, if the document submitted is in the name of an ancestor, then another document proving relationship was required to be submitted — such as a ration card, LIC/bank document or an educational certificate that contains the names of the applicant as well as the parent/ancestor.

What could be a cutoff date for a nationwide NRC?

According to the Citizenship Act, 1955, amended in 1986, anyone born in India up to July 1, 1987 is an Indian citizen by birth.

For those born on or after July 1, 1987, the law set out a fresh condition: one of the parents must be an Indian citizen.

By a 2003 amendment, for any individual born on or after December 3, 2004 to be considered an Indian citizen, one parent must be an Indian citizen while the other must not be an illegal immigrant.

This does not apply to Assam, due to the cutoff of 1971.

For the rest of the country, those born outside the country after January 26, 1950, and residing in India without proper documents is an illegal immigrant.