On the verge: Revocation and denial of citizenship in India also vulnerable. Civil society organisations also raised serious concerns about the disparate treatment of what the NRC administration called ‘original inhabitants’, who were required to meet lower evidentiary requirements. The NRC administration included what it considered to be communities indigenous to Assam and reportedly excluded Muslim communities.18 The final NRC published on 31 August 2019 contained 31 million persons, leaving out 1.9 million residents of the state. All persons who have been excluded from the NRC now have a right to appeal to the Foreigners Tribunals. The Indian government has already increased the number of tribunals to 300, which will be hearing these appeals soon. But these tribunals continue to suffer from the same institutional weaknesses. Human rights and civil society organisations have consistently noted that the tribunals have deviated from standard rules of evidence and procedure at the cost of due process. Recent studies also show a pattern of declaring persons foreigners on technical grounds like minor errors in spellings and dates.19 This, combined with the fact that the burden of proof is on the individuals, has made tribunal proceedings exceedingly hard. There are also concerns that the absence of adequate institutional independence will allow the state to influence tribunal members in declaring people foreigners. The combination of all these factors – the social and bureaucratic context, unavailability of documentary proof, acute economic vulnerability, and procedural and institutional weaknesses of the tribunals – place the individuals subject to the NRC procedures under an extreme threat of citizenship revocation. Thus, while the Indian state – the government and the Supreme Court – has framed these as citizenship determination procedures, these factors make ordinary citizens vulnerable to the revocation of their legally-held citizenship status. At present, the formal mechanism in India only provides for revocation of citizenship of persons who are citizens by naturalisation or registration.20 The grounds for revocation include fraud in registration or naturalisation, disloyalty towards the Constitution of India, contact with the enemy during war, certain crimes and residing outside India continuously for seven years.21 The formal mechanism also specifies that Indian citizenship automatically lapses upon acquisition of citizenship of another country.22 The formal revocation mechanism does not apply to anyone who is an Indian citizen by birth or descent. The practical mechanisms of the NRC extend this domain of revocation – albeit informally and by implication – to persons who may be legally Indian citizens but fail to succeed in the bureaucratic and tribunal proceedings. Implications of Assam’s NRC There is also a worrying degree of uncertainty about the status of those who are excluded and fail in their appeals.23 They will have the right to appeal to higher courts, including the Supreme Court, but the 18 Scroll (25 July 2019), How many times will NRC test your Indian citizenship? Depends on which community you belong to. https://scroll.in/article/931646/how-many-times-will-nrc-test-your-indian-citizenship-dependson-which-community-you-belong-to. (consulted 24 June 2020) 19 Amnesty International (20 November 2019), Designed to Exclude: How India’s Courts are Allowing Foreigners Tribunals to Render People Stateless in Assam. https://amnesty.org.in/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Assam-ForeignersTribunals-Report-1.pdf. (consulted 24 June 2020) 20 The Citizenship Act 1955, section 10. 21 The Citizenship Act 1955, section 10(2). 22 The Citizenship Act 1955, section 9. See also, GLOBALCIT (2017), Global Database on Modes of Loss of Citizenship. https://globalcit.eu/loss-of-citizenship/. (consulted 6 August 2020) 23 Amnesty International (31 August 2019), Uncertain Destiny For Millions In Assam Post NRC https://amnesty.org.in/news-update/uncertain-destiny-for-millions-in-assam-post-nrc/. (consulted 23 June 2020) European University Institute 29