The Assam Accord of 1985 prescribes the date as the cut-off for detecting and deporting illegal foreigners

The Gauhati High Court has observed that the burden of proving one’s citizenship was on a person claiming the status while dismissing a woman’s petition challenging the order of a Foreigners Tribunal (FT) declaring her a foreigner.

A division bench comprising Justice Manojit Bhuyan and Justice Parthivjyoti Saikia said that the petitioner, Nur Begum of Habigaon in eastern Assam’s Golaghat district, could not prove her linkage to any ancestor who lived in Assam before March 25, 1971.

The Assam Accord of 1985 prescribes the date as the cut-off for detecting and deporting illegal foreigners.

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The court referred to Section 6 of the Foreigners Act, 1946, to make the observation. The FTs have been handling cases under this Act since the Supreme Court scrapped the Illegal Migrants (Determination) by Tribunal Act of 1983 that had put the onus of proving a person’s citizenship on the accuser or the authorities.

Ms. Begum, who claimed to have been born in 1986, had submitted eight documents to establish her case. One of these was a school-leaving certificate of 2000 that stated her father’s name as one Raju Hussain, who in another document was found to be included in the voters’ list of 1997.

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The other documents included the voters’ list of 1966 showing the name of one Jenurathdin, who the petitioner had claimed was her grandfather, and a voter ID card belonging to one Jahorun Hussain, who Ms. Begum had asserted was her mother.

The court, however, ruled that all the certificates rendered themselves as ‘inadmissible’ in evidence, while referring to the Foreigners Act and the Foreigners (Tribunals) Order, 1964, to observe that the burden of proving citizenship “absolutely rests” on the petitioner “notwithstanding anything contained in the Evidence Act, 1872”.

The bench also refrained from “reviewing the findings of facts reached” by the FT and said: “In the instant case and as observed above, the petitioner not only failed to discharge the burden but also utterly failed to make proof of the most crucial aspect, that is, in establishing linkage to her projected parents and/or the grandfather... we find no merit in the writ petition. Accordingly, the same stands dismissed, however, without any order as to cost.”

On February 12, Justice Bhuyan and Justice Saikia had dismissed the citizenship claims of Jabeda Begum, a 50-year-old woman who had produced 15 documents, including land revenue receipts, bank documents and PAN card. Police asserted that the woman was absconding from her village in Baksa district.