-IndiaSpend.com Dimlarpar (Bodoland Territorial Council), Assam: It was a rainy September afternoon in this remote village in Baksa, a district of the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) in western Assam. Outside a small tin-roofed mud house, Santi Rani Chand, a frail 72-year-old clad in a white saree, sat on a wooden bench recalling her youngest son’s suicide. Binay Chand, 32, had hanged himself from a mango tree in a neighbour’s backyard in September...

-Hindustan Times The NRC exercise is about identifying Illegal Immigrants within Assam. So why are the Bengalis saying they are being targeted? In the subcontinent, people have lugged suitcases. Said goodbye to old neighbours and acquired new ones. They have changed cities, hammered nameplates on different doors, sometimes in one generation or in each of them. Moving in has never meant that you won’t move out. You may even get an answer out...

-The Indian Express Under Article 6 of the Constitution, anyone who migrated to India before July 19, 1948, from territory that had become part of Pakistan, automatically became a citizen if either of their parents or grandparents was born in India. But those who entered India after this date needed to register themselves. A petition pending before the Supreme Court, and expected to come up before a five-judge Bench, could potentially affect...

-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...