An Open Access Journal from The Law Brigade (Publishing) Group 273 a crisis of human suffering within families as many of them find their mothers, sisters, wives and daughters excluded from the final list of citizens. There is no gender balance or justice in the process of identifying the so-called ‘foreigners’. It puts the already disadvantaged women through a completely arbitrary process. Women who get married before attaining the age of eighteen, whose identity in the Indian society (where the doctrine of coverture still plays an integral part) is linked with her husbands will not have sufficient documentation to establish proof of residency, as most documents available to such women will not be recognized by the enforcing agency and law. The NRC process has turned a blind eye to the patriarchal set up of Indian society, where the identity of most women is entwined with that their husbands. The National Family Health Survey data reveals that in char dominated districts nearly half of the women get married before the age of eighteen. When women are married off before attaining the age an adult, they cannot get enlisted in the voters list from their parental house. In absence of other documents, it removes any legal link to their parental home. This forces them to opt for panchayat certificates to prove linkage with parentsxiii, only for such documents to be rejected. The NRC process was drafted without keeping in mind the polity of the country where women struggle to get education, in comparison to the male child of the family. Even if a small percentage of women in Assam had gone to primary schools, those documents would also not valid under the NRC guidelines. Marriages across state-lines are not uncommon in India. Several men in Assam are married to women from states such as Bihar, Rajasthan, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh. These women trace family legacies to their respective states but failed to produce appropriate documents. In some cases, the documents produced were not admissible and a large number remained unverified by the respective states despite repeated reminders to chief secretariesxiv. This also highlights the lack of co-ordination between state-agencies to the determent of poor citizens. Reports have also suggested that lacs of women despite submitting required documents did not get in to final NRCxv. This gender-discriminatory system and procedural flaws in the NRC process has caused a lot of pain and strife. If such an exercise were to be performed pan-India the outcome would be undoubtedly disastrous. There are many examples that outline the inefficiency and arbitrariness in the NRC process, which are pertinent to mention. Over 4.7 million married women submitted panchayat JOURNAL OF LEGAL STUDIES AND RESEARCH Volume 6 Issue 4 – ISSN 2455 2437 August 2020 www.thelawbrigade.com Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3665733