'Ten inmates of Assam's six detention centres, where declared or convicted "foreigners" are kept, died in last one year, Lok Sabha was informed on Tuesday. Union Minister of State for Home G Kishan Reddy said as many as 3,331 people have been lodged at the six detention centres in Assam, while another such facility with a capacity to put 3,000 people is under construction in the state...'
'“Where are you from? Show me your Aadhaar card… Call the police,” an auto rickshaw driver can be heard bellowing out the order to a man, who was later identified as a 25-year-old migrant labourer from West Bengal. Even as the migrant labourer yells back saying, "You want my ID card?" in Malayalam accent and is searching his wallet, the auto driver slaps him across the face...'
'Jabeda Begum, a woman whose petition challenging the order of a tribunal that had declared her as a foreigner was dismissed by the Gauhati High Court, has gone into hiding, fearing that she will be sent to a detention centre. The family said that the police raided the house earlier this week even though they had said they will follow due procedure...
'A couple who were accused by Mumbai police of being "Bangladeshi infiltrators" residing illegally in Mumbai were acquitted by an Additional Chief Magistrate of the Esplanade court in Mumbai. The court held that both the accused were in possession of election cards which were sufficient to prove their Indian citizenship.
'More than a 100 people in a Hyderabad neighbourhood have been asked by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) to verify their Aadhaar enrolment documents in person or face a suspension or cancellation of their 12-digit identity number that underpins access to government subsidies. The matter first came to light when a letter sent to 40-year-old autorickshaw driver Mohd Sattar Khan was widely shared on social media websites.
'The fate of over 1.9 million people who have been left out of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam now rests with the Foreigners Tribunals. For the last 15 years, Foreigners Tribunals have wreaked havoc in Assam by arbitrarily denying people their citizenship. Riddled with bias, they have declared Indian citizens to be foreigners for minor spelling mistakes in their names, their inability to provide detailed documents or recall minute ancestral details dating back 50 years or more.
'Over 120 people in Hyderabad have received notices from the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), asking them to prove that they are not illegal immigrants and have obtained their Aadhaar numbers through legitimate documents. Although the UIDAI has insisted in a separate statement that notices “have nothing to do with citizenship”, two examples that have entered the public domain appear to ask the person in question to “prove all your claims of citizenship”.
'The UIDAI on February 3 sent a letter to Sattar Khan, a resident of Hyderabad raising questions on whether he was an Indian citizen. The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) that oversees the functioning of Aadhaar in the country in a letter to Sattar claimed to have had received a complaint/allegation that he was not an Indian National, the letter did not specify who made the complaint. UIDAI alleged that according to the complaint Sattar had obtained the Aadhaar card through false pretences, making false claims and submitting false documents...
'A women’s vigil inspired by the Shaheen Bagh protest in Delhi is underway for the past three days in the tech city of Bangalore against the Centre’s new citizenship matrix. Located near the famous Bilal mosque on the busy Tannery Road in east Bangalore, the venue has been carved out by blocking one of the many crossroads. The protesters have called the vigil Bilal Bagh, a nod to Shaheen Bagh. The sit-in, which began on Saturday, has already become a go-to place for all those who believe that the citizenship regime must be overthrown...'
'Assam’s Welfare of Minorities Minister Ranjit Dutta has confirmed the state’s plans to implement a census to identify Assam’s ‘khilonjiya’, or indigenous Muslim population, this year. On Tuesday, Dutta will meet with various representatives of the indigenous Assamese Muslim community to seek their “suggestions” in finalising the framework of the census... Rahman will be part of the meeting with the Welfare of Minorities & Development Department on Tuesday. He added that many indigenous Muslims have been wrongfully tagged D-voter or Doubtful-voter in Assam.
