Pre-publication draft September 2023 Introduction In the last two decades, India has introduced several legal mechanisms of documentary citizenship that have alarming implications for the right to nationality. On 31 August 2019, a citizen enumeration exercise in India’s eastern state of Assam excluded more than 1.9 million people.1 The exercise, called the ‘National Register of Citizens’ (NRC), required the 33 million residents of Assam to submit documents to prove their Indian citizenship. Soon after its release, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Filippo Grandi called the NRC ‘an enormous blow to global efforts to eradicate statelessness’,2 which was a sentiment soon echoed by numerous international civil society organisations.3 The NRC, according to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues, Fernand de Varennes, could result in ‘the biggest exercise in statelessness since the second world war’.4 Under other administrative mechanisms, which include procedures for adjudicating citizenship status, more than 500,000 Indian residents have been classified as ‘foreigners’ or ‘doubtful citizens’ in Assam since 1985.5 These administrative mechanisms provide procedures to legally contest the state’s questioning of citizenship status, including appeals in superior courts. Since most of the affected persons lack the material resources to approach the higher authorities, only a miniscule proportion have been able to exhaust all their legal remedies. Indian law is unclear about when, precisely, the affected persons would be formally categorised as foreign nationals. This has meant that the citizenship status of millions of Indian residents remains undecided in any legally clear and final form. Ironically, India has consistently reiterated this to refute the allegation — made frequently by international human rights organisations — that it is rendering people stateless. While they may not have been formally rendered ‘foreigners’, the affected citizens are in a heightened condition of insecurity. The legal, material and emotional manifestations of this insecurity are well-documented. The legal system expects poor and unlettered citizens to procure official documents — not adequately maintained by the state as a norm — to prove 1 2 3 4 5 ‘UN High Commissioner for Refugees Expresses Alarm at Statelessness Risk in India’s Assam’ UNHCR (1 September 2019) <www.unhcr.org/uk/news/press/2019/9/5d6a24ba4/un-high-commissioner-refugeesexpresses-alarm-statelessness-risk-indias.html> accessed 1 March 2022. ibid. ‘The Biggest Mass-disenfranchisement of the 21st Century’ (Joint Statement, 5 September 2019) <https://files.institutesi.org/cso-joint-statement-on-assam-nrc.pdf> accessed 1 March 2022. Rebecca Ratcliffe, ‘“A Nightmarish Mess”: Millions in Assam Brace for Loss of Citizenship’ The Guardian (30 August 2019) <www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/aug/30/nightmarish-mess-millionsassam-brace-for-loss-of-citizenship-india> accessed 1 March 2022. As this chapter describes in detail, the two prominent mechanisms besides the NRC are the Indian Election Commission classification of voters as ‘doubtful’ in late 1990s and the Foreigners Tribunals declaring persons as ‘foreigners’. According to the available information, the Election Commission classified approximately 370,000 voters as ‘doubtful’ in 1997, and until April 2021, the Foreigners Tribunals had declared 143,000 persons as ‘foreigners’. See Syeda Ambia Zahan, ‘Assam: 22 Years On, RTI Finds Removes Doubts about 33 “D-voters”’ The Times of India (Mumbai, 22 November 2019) <https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/guwahati/22-years-on-rti-finds-removes-doubts-about-33-dvoters/articleshow/72174241.cms> accessed 1 March 2022; Kangkan Kalita, 'Over 1.43 lakh People were Declared Foreigners in Assam’ The Times of India (Mumbai, 9 Febraury 2022) < https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/guwahati/22-years-on-rti-finds-removes-doubts-about-33-dvoters/articleshow/72174241.cms>accessed 1 March 2022. 2 Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4111014