4. Violations of Natural Justice and the Right of Due Process and the certificate, both formally proved, lacked probative value. Nor did the Court consider the testimony of Jahura’s husband and brother, who had long-standing personal knowledge of her identity. Instead of evaluating this cumulative evidence holistically, the Court simply discarded it, leading to an unjust dismissal of Jahura’s writ petition. Similarly, in Manikjan Bibi v. Union of India,432 the petitioner presented multiple voter lists, a sale deed, a school transfer certificate, a Gaonburah certificate, and the testimonies of her husband, brother, and a relative who knew her since birth. These were summarily dismissed. Justice M.R. Pathak neither read the documents and testimonies together nor considered how they corroborated each other. The Court accepted the FT’s conclusion that the oral evidence was “unbelievable” without scrutinising why, nor did it consider key documents like the Gaonburah certificate or land deed. This mechanical endorsement of the FT’s flawed reasoning amounted to a failure of judicial review and misapplication of both certiorari principles and evidentiary law. In Basiran Nessa’s case,433 she claimed citizenship through her grandfather Mahar Fakir (on the 1965 voter roll) and father Zakir Hussain (1989 voter roll). Her husband supported this link through his testimony. However, the Court failed to read this testimony alongside the voter rolls, which together could have formed a complete and credible narrative of Basiran’s lineage and citizenship. By contrast, the High Court has been quick to juxtapose oral and documentary evidence only to find inconsistencies that can be used to discredit a claim. For example, in Khalilur Rahman’s case,434 his brother testified that their mother died in 1963. Khalilur stated he was 52 in 2016, implying birth in 1964. Justice Ujjal Bhuyan seized on this minor discrepancy — that Khalilur could not have 130 been born in 1964 if his mother died in 1963 — to dismiss his claim. This rigid parsing of testimony disregarded the real-world challenges that illiterate or marginalised litigants face when recalling dates accurately. Such minor inconsistencies should not outweigh substantial documentary evidence or the core credibility of a claim. Conclusion This chapter has laid bare the deep and systemic procedural failings of Assam’s citizenship determination process, as conducted by the FTs and sanctioned by the jurisprudence of the Gauhati High Court. The evidence reveals a pervasive culture of procedural evasion, arbitrary adjudication, and denial of fair trial rights in a domain as constitutionally significant as the determination of citizenship—a process that has life-altering consequences for millions of residents. These failures do not represent isolated lapses or aberrations but form a consistent, predictable pattern of injustice, underpinned by defective legal norms, institutional apathy, and a political climate of suspicion. 432 433 434 Manikjan Bibi v. Union of India WP(C) 4763/2019 (Gauhati High Court, 4 October 2024). Mustt. Basiran Nessa v. Union of India WP(C) 4614/2013 (Gauhati High Court, 21 August 2017). Khalilur Rahman (n 372).