Assam NRC: Those left out find unlikely allies in NLU students

NEW DELHI: As a student of the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research, or NALSAR, in Hyderabad, Oorvi Mehta, 22, did get “pushed into” doing a few “corporate internships”, but she always knew she wanted to work on human rights. And in August 2019, a massive human rights crisis seemed imminent. On August 31, the final list on the National Register of Citizens, or NRC, was released in Assam. Missing from it: over 19 lakh people who could not prove to the satisfaction of the state that they had been in India before 1971.

As panic spread, three assistant professors in three law schools founded Parichay, a platform to place law students as interns with lawyers in Assam who are representing those left out of the NRC. Mohsin Alam Bhat, who teaches at Jindal Global Law School, discussed the possibility of getting the National Law Universities (NLUs) involved with Anoop Surendranath from NLU Delhi. They were joined by Darshana Mitra from the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences (WBNUJS), Kolkata.

“They [the NLUs] thought that it would be a good learning platform for the students and also that they would be able to contribute to legal representation,” said Bhat.

Finally, five NLUs joined in and in early October, Parichay was launched. Now it is mostly student-led.

Mehta promptly signed up. Tamalika Bera, in her final year at WBNUJS, did too. Arunima Nair, a third-year student of Jindal Global Law School, was an early entrant and is now one of Parichay’s 13 core volunteers.

Question of identity

The five NLUs that are officially part of it are the National Law University and Judicial Academy, Assam; WBNUJS; National Law University, Odisha; NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad and National Law University, Delhi. They will fund the project from their legal aid budget. However, students from all law schools are eligible to join.

The volunteer team came together by mid-October and applications were invited from students. “We have already received over 600 applications from students across the country,” said Nair. At present, Parichay consists of 175 student volunteers who will be working with around 60 lawyers in Assam

Students will be divided into two teams. The ones who can speak Assamese or Bengali will be part of the fieldwork team and the rest will work on research and drafting.

In Assam, an NRC already existed, compiled in 1951 in response to widespread complaints of immigration, especially from neighbouring Bangladesh. Through the Assam Accord of 1985, it was settled that foreigners who had entered Assam before March 25, 1971, would be granted citizenship. In 2014 – before many students now associated with Parichay had entered law school – the process of updating the list began on the order of the Supreme Court and monitored by it.

A helping hand

“This was something I was thinking before my law school began – I was thinking that it would be great if law students could help out in some manner,” said Nair. “When it became public that around 19 lakh people were left out, there was this sense of an impending crisis. A lot of people didn’t know what the next step was, or they did not have enough access to the complicated legal aid required to rectify or appeal this.”

The students gain something from it too. “This topic of migrants and citizenship is difficult to come by in any other internship,” said Nair. “It deals with multiple constitutional and
legal challenges.”

Tamalika Bera became aware of the Assam NRC when it was just beginning, through her reading circle at WBNUJS. “I started taking interest in the process of NRC [but] I didn’t think at the time that I would be involved in any other way…. Then, [NRC became a matter of national interest and] everyone was talking about NRC. That was when Parichay also came in,” said Bera.

For Mehta, this is the kind of work she would pursue even if there were other, more lucrative options available. “I’ve done a few corporate internships because…those are supposed to be beneficial for my career,” she said. “But I’ve always known that I wanted to work on human rights.”

The students will mainly be working on standard evidence issues like the admissibility of certain documents, or concerns in the interpretation of certain documents. “The NRC is mainly about legacy documents and legacy data to prove your link with your ancestors who are meant to reach Assam before 1971,” said Bhat. “These are the questions on which we anticipate the appeal
to happen.”

A loaded term in the context of the NRC, Parichay is Hindi for a range of English words including “acquaintance”, “identity”, “introduction”
and “credentials”.

However, little has moved on the Assam NRC since August, when the list was declared. Those left out were allowed to appeal for their inclusion in case there was an error in the process. The appeal period ended on December 31. Those still left out were to be served individual rejection letters which
they could appeal in the foreigners tribunals. But those letters have not arrived and in the meantime, the government has passed the Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019. The home minister has repeatedly linked the CAA with the possibility of a nationwide NRC exercise.

On citizenship

While the question mark over the Assam NRC has temporarily delayed Parichay’s activities in the state, some of its volunteers have found their canvas expand exponentially. They did the heavy lifting behind one of the 60 writ petitions filed against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019 in the Supreme Court in December.

“The research was on fairly detailed questions of constitutional law and research based on refugee statistics, United Nations statistics, Ministry of Home Affairs statistics,” said Nair. “It’s a mix of intensive policy research and legal research in between. We looked at all the writs of all those filed and formed our arguments accordingly.” The petition, along with the rest, was accepted for hearing.

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