-Scroll.in Of late, the BJP had done well to attract Dalit Bengali refugees with its promise of citizenship for Hindu bangladeshis. But the NRC might harm that narrative. On Wednesday, the All India Matua Mahasangha held protests in West Bengal against the exercise to update the National Register of Citizens in Assam to identify undocumented migrants from bangladesh. Its supporters organised rail blockades at various points in the North 24 Parganas...

-The Indian Express The Assam Accord of 1985 began with the assurance that the “government has all along been most anxious to find a satisfactory resolution to the problem of foreigners in Assam.” In the late 1970s, an extraordinary student movement had taken root in Assamese soil. The Mangaldoi constituency, which was voting in a bypoll after the death of its MP Hiralal Patwari, was under the spotlight. The seat, with a...

-Newsclick.in Increase in Muslim population is not due to immigrants but because of higher birth rate, which is driven by poverty and illiteracy. Assam’s Muslim population was recorded as about 34% of the state’s total population in 2011 Census. It was about 31% in 2001 and over 28% in 1991. That’s not much of an increase. Yet insidious political propaganda about rising Muslim population has swamped the minds of people, both...

-The New Indian Express Over 40 lakh people were left out of Assam’s draft citizenship list. India is a land of immigrants. Inclusion, not exclusion, has been our motto The second draft of Assam’s National Register of Citizens (NRC) has been published with 40 lakh people not finding their names in it. They are on the verge of becoming stateless. There are apprehensions of ethnic cleansing or disenfranchisement now due to the...

-The Indian Express Can a democracy permit so many to be in a state of liminal legality? NRC poses a political and moral question The possibility — whether immediate or somewhat remote — that at the end of the process as many as 4 million people may lose their legal status as citizens should not be a cause of celebration in a democracy. Nor should it generate a mad rush among...