2020 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 2(1) process, and in particular of the Foreigner Tribunals (‘FTs’), which are designed to identify whether those excluded are citizens or ‘foreigners’. This article fills this gap by undertaking a close examination of whether the FTs comply with the fundamental precepts of the rule of law. The article also seeks to contextualise the current controversy in light of the history of the region and ongoing discussion about the fundamental nature of the Indian state. The Indian State of Assam is located south of the Eastern Himalayas in North East India and shares its borders with Bhutan and Bangladesh, and certain other Indian States including West Bengal. Even though the citizenship crisis in Assam could be said to have been brewing since the 1960s, there appears to be a lack of legal academic work that analyses the Indian citizenship determination process followed by FTs generally or with specific reference to the Indian State of Assam. The issue has reached the Supreme Court of India as well on several occasions, but the issues that have been raised and dealt with in this article have not been dealt with by the Supreme Court of India. After the Partition of British India into India and Pakistan in 1947, India chose to be a secular country where Muslims constitute about 13.4 per cent of the population and Hindus constitute the majority. 1 The government of India has proposed a pan-India National Population Register that includes questions on citizenship, and has also enacted the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, 2 which allows Hindus from certain neighbouring countries to gain Indian citizenship through administrative procedures. It is perceived that Hindus who are left out from being identified as Indian citizens after a determination by a FT would be allowed to regain their citizenship using the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019. These developments as a whole, therefore, raise questions about the potential role of the FTs in a broader ethno-nationalist project that results in marginalising Muslim citizens of India. In addition, the identification of doubtful citizens and ‘foreigners’ in the Indian State of Assam assumes importance in the international context, because it raises concerns about limitations on sovereign power to determine nationality arising from international human rights law and the Constitution of India (‘the Constitution’). The experience from the Indian State of Assam is also relevant because the Indian Government may implement the ‘Assam Model’ across India, resulting in a disproportionate rise of stateless persons globally, at a time when the United Nations is actively pursuing the reduction of statelessness across the globe. In this article I explain the context of the identification of Indian citizens in which the FTs have been functioning in the Indian State of Assam. This paper argues that FTs have not been established by law but by an administrative order, resulting in a weak tribunal whose judges are not independent and whose procedures are not fair. The article explores whether the constitution and function of FTs in Assam fulfils rule of law guarantees. It concludes that FTs in their present form operate oppressively, often resulting in a miscarriage of justice that cannot be corrected by limited judicial review. Part II begins by providing an important historical overview in order to understand the context of the NRC process. Part III then explains the article’s conception of the rule of law, against which the FTs will be assessed. Part IV 1 2 ‘Religion’, Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India (Web Page, 2001) <https://censusindia.gov.in/Census_And_You/religion.aspx>. See Farrah Ahmed, ‘Arbitrariness, Subordination and Unequal Citizenship’ (2020) Indian Law Review (online), citing Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019 (India) Law No 27 of 2019. 113