AA Edit | Top Court’s Intervention On Citizenship Issue Welcome

The Supreme Court order on Monday demanding that the question of citizenship be addressed through a “fair, lawful and reasoned” process comes as a reiteration of the republic’s commitment to the basic ideals of democracy and an oblique comment on the approach of the Union government and its arms in targeting its own people with questionable motives. The apex court made it very clear it recognised the legitimate right of the state in ensuring that no person who is legally ineligible to be an Indian citizen acquires that status but the process cannot be a one-sided and mechanical one, devoid of the application of mind. It is a sad commentary on the government’s actions that the judiciary had to step in and remind it that declaring a person a “foreigner” has grave consequences and that the process must respect constitutional guarantees.

The Supreme Court’s observations have come while setting aside 27 orders of the Gauhati high court which upheld the decisions of the Foreigners’ Tribunals declaring the appellants as foreigners. The high court’s reasoning that the tribunals passed the orders as the appellants had not appeared before them despite being served notices did not satisfy the apex court, and this quintessentially differentiates the approach of the Union government and agencies such as the Election Commission from that of an institution that believes in fairness, respect for constitutional principles and adherence to democratic values. The Supreme Court has, by admonishing the tribunals for adopting logic untenable from the eyes of justice and fairness, puts the onus on the state, and not the person, to prove its case about citizenship.

It may be remembered that the Election Commission has used a legitimate, periodical and legal tool called the special intensive revision (SIR) of the electoral roll to disenfranchise Indians in their lakhs; it had the audacity to conduct elections to the state Assemblies keeping them out of a process that is foundational in an electoral democracy. Reports suggest that the same EC is now coming out with a condition that new voters must produce documents of their parents being part of an SIR, a dubious and suspect exercise, if they are to enrol as voters. It is unfortunate that the apex court had put its stamp of approval on the discreditable exercise of the EC and refused to intervene when it made a mockery of the election process unlike when the foreigners’ tribunals discovered its own logic to declare people foreigners.

As the Supreme Court pointed out, the state has a right and responsibility to ensure that only Indian citizens are entitled to the rights accorded to that class of people. But that differentiation is of huge consequence to the life of the individual. The Supreme Court’s intervention has come as a forceful declaration that the state cannot invent its own methodologies, logic and tools to question the legitimate rights of people; it has to act within the constitutional framework. Follow the law, is the simple lesson that the apex court would want the government to learn.