Identifying the ‘Outsider’ Court in 2019 reduced the age limit from 45 years to 35 years, and diluted the requirement of experience from 10 years to 7 years. 85 This goes to establish the necessity to entrench the bare minimum eligibility conditions in the statute creating the tribunal, and not in delegated legislation that can be either changed overnight or interpreted capriciously by the appointing authority. Given the Supreme Court’s orders on the NRC, 86 Justice Gogoi’s personal supervision 87 of the case and a permissive direction to Gauhati High Court to monitor the creation and functioning of the Tribunal, the Gauhati High Court diluted the eligibility condition of appointing members to FTs and appointed over 200 members. It is also relevant that the power to create FTs and to appoint members under the FTO is with the Central Government. This power has been delegated to state governments. In the advertisement referred to above, the first requirement is a person must be ‘a citizen of India’ and must have ‘fair knowledge of official language of Assam and its (Assam) historical background giving rise to foreigner’s issues’. 88 This itself is likely to result in exclusion. Given that NRC required each and every person resident in Assam to apply for inclusion in the NRC list — who is ‘citizen of India’ is a contentious issue. In fact, is not that the very question that the FT must decide? This necessarily means that the eligibility criteria is itself a recipe to exclude ‘suspect citizens’ from even participating in the selection process to be appointed as members of FTs, and in the absence of any written examination or transparent selection process, the grounds for exclusion are never spelt out. This may be viewed in the backdrop of reports of serious bias in the administrative quarters against Bengali speaking Muslims in Assam. 89 D Lack of Transparent Selection Process and Lack of Judicial Training It needs little elucidation that ordinarily any process for selection to a public post in India must provide for (a) fair and transparent public recruitment system; (b) adequate training; and (c) must adhere to rules of the reservation to enhance diversity. However, for Assam all legal rules are being ignored. The advertisement for the selection of members of FTs does not reflect that the principles of reservation for ensuring equal access to opportunity (the Indian version of 85 86 87 88 89 Sagar, ‘Case Closed: How Assam’s Foreigners Tribunals, Aided by the High Court, Function Like Kangaroo Courts and Persecute Its Minorities’, Caravan (online, 6 November 2019) <https://caravanmagazine.in/law/assam-foreigners-tribunals-function-like-kangaroo-courtspersecute-minorities>. Assam Sanmilita Mahasangha (n 37). See Mandhani (n 38). Judicial Advertisement (n 81) 1 [1]. Arshia Dhar, ‘Journalist Rohini Mohan on Her Assam NRC Reportage, “Breakdown of Fragile, Important Coexistence” in India’, Firstpost (online, 23 December 2019) <https://www.firstpost.com/india/known-for-extensive-assam-nrc-reportage-rohini-mohansays-india-is-seeing-breakdown-of-a-fragile-coexistence-7790921.html>. There are groups, who, from the beginning of this process, said that it is completely biased against Muslims. But it took months of reporting to show that the NRC is also biased against the poor. So we need to keep an open mind. While it is targeted against the Muslims, it was also affecting more people, and that is why so many care about the CAA and NRC now. You may not care at all about the Muslims, but you do care about yourself and the poor. See also ‘India Strips Millions of Bengali Speaking Muslims of Citizenship in Assam’, Daily Sabah (online, 30 July 2018) <https://www.dailysabah.com/asia/2018/07/30/india-stripsmillions-of-bengali-speaking-muslims-of-citizenship-in-assam>. 128