Chakrabarty: Citizenship Deprivation as an Act of Persecution: Case Study of t Court, has been criticized as complicit in the entire process of citizenship deprivation through persecution. In 2005, the Supreme Court struck down an Act titled, Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act, 1983, reversing the burden to prove citizenship upon a suspected foreigner applicant, on the Petition of the incumbent Head of the State. While equating the presence of migrants with ‘external aggression’, the Court was led by documents that showed, without further scrutiny, an overwhelming increase in the State’s population. 131 In the aftermath of this Judgment, the Assam Government has dealt with suspected citizens under the Foreigners Act, 1946, and the Foreigners (Tribunal) Orders, 1964. In 2014, a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court relied upon the same judgement and the inflated figures, to claim that the NRC had to be urgently updated because of ‘land-hungry migrants, mostly Muslims’ and a hypothetical ‘Islamic fundamentalist vision of a larger country’.132 According to sources, information collected over an Application under the Right to Information Act stated that the Government did not have any accurate estimates, although a 2001 census that the Supreme Court itself relied on, claimed that almost half of the twelve million “illegal migrants” resided in Assam. 133 Critics have noted that despite first admitting a petition praying for implementation of the Assam Accord in 2009, the Supreme Court has played a more active role since 2014, involving itself in overseeing the procedure and appointments, and calling for regular updates by the NRC Coordinator seeking status of the detention centers as well as setting timelines.134 Moreover, the Bench overseeing the matter has been presided on all occasions by a judge, who himself is an ethnic Assamese, and is known to have publicly supported the NRC process, raising 131 Sarbananda Sonowal v Union of India, Writ Petition (Civil) No 131 of 2000 (12 July 2005), online: <https://indiankanoon.org/doc/907725/>. 132 Assam Public Works v Union of India, Writ Petition (Civil) No 562/2012 (13 August 2019) online: <https://indiankanoon.org/doc/50798357/>. 133 Debarshi Das & Prasenjit Bose, “Assam NRC: Govt Clueless About How Many Illegal Migrants Actually Live in India, RTI Shows”, HuffingtonPost (16 November 2018), online: <https://www.huffpost.com/archive/in/entry/assam-nrc-govt-clueless-on-how-many-illegal-immigrants-actuallylive-in-india-rti-shows_a_23591448>. 134 Ananthakrishnan G, “How Supreme Court Drove the Final NRC Exercise”, Indian Express (1 September 2019), online: <https://indianexpress.com/article/north-east-india/assam/how-supreme-court-drove-the-final-assam-nrcexercise-5955098/&gt>. Published by Osgoode Digital Commons, 2021 23