Executive Summary 22 Citizenship is fundamental to realise the full extent of human rights. Stateless persons suffer from a lack of access to their rights since they are not citizens of any state. Precarious citizens – whose nationality status is in a limbo – stand at the risk of statelessness and erosion of rights. This report aims to comment on and review existing law and policy on statelessness in India. It is divided into three chapters – Status, Detention and SocioEconomic Rights. Each chapter provides a framework of law and policy by examining Indian law, international law and global best practices that India should follow to fulfil its obligations towards precarious citizens in Assam and stateless persons in Indian territory. Each chapter concludes with recommendations to strengthen the existing law and policy. the first chapter of this report employs international and Indian jurisprudence to discuss the legal status of precarious citizens in Assam and stateless individuals in India. It is divided into three sections. The first two sections address the issue of the legal status of the two groups, respectively, while the third section summarises the arguments and the key recommendations made throughout the chapter. The first section argues that there exists a right to nationality for every individual and that an individual who has a ‘genuine link’ to India must have Indian nationality. This obligation upon the Indian state has been qualified by elaborating upon the right of an individual not to be arbitrarily deprived of their Indian nationality. This section further develops another ancillary obligation upon the Indian state to prevent statelessness within its territory. It argues that precarious citizens in Assam are Indian citizens facing arbitrary deprivation of nationality and their Indian citizenship must be automatically affirmed. The section ends with a special focus on the right to nationality of children. The second section stresses the need for SECURING CITIZENSHIP