He produced 15 documents, but was declared a foreigner. Here's why

The Gauhati High Court has upheld a Foreigners Tribunal decision declaring an Assam resident a foreigner, despite him submitting 15 separate documents to prove his Indian citizenship. A Division Bench of the High Court dismissed the petition of the writ petition of the person, a daily waged labourer, observing that the evidence submitted by him was either legally inadmissible or insufficient to establish his citizenship.

The petitioner, living in rented accommodation near Guwahati, had provided both oral testimony and a seemingly robust paper trail. His documentation included copies of the 1951 National Register of Citizens (NRC) listing his father and grandparents, multiple voter lists dating back to 1966, a 2017 school certificate, a PAN card, and an Elector's Photo Identity Card (EPIC). He also submitted oral testimony from his father to establish his lineage.

India Today Digital is withholding the petitioner's name because he hasn't yet exhausted his legal remedies to prove that he is a citizen.

A Division Bench comprising Justices Kalyan Rai Surana and Shamima Jahan ruled that none of the documents successfully linked the petitioner to his claimed ancestry. In the order, the Bench declared that the petitioner had failed to "discharge his burden as required under Section 9 of the Foreigners Act, 1946 to prove that he is not a foreigner but an Indian Citizen".

WHAT DOCUMENTS DID ASSAM PETITIONER FURNISH TO PROVE INDIAN CITIZENSHIP?

To establish his Indian citizenship, the petitioner submitted 15 documents to the Foreigners Tribunal. These included computerised copies of the 1951 NRC featuring the names of his father and grandparents, alongside certified copies of voter lists from 1996 to 2017 containing his family members' names.

Additionally, the petitioner furnished a 1973 original land purchase deed executed by his grandfather, a 2017 school certificate from Hashdoba Anchalik High School, his PAN card, and his EPIC or voter's card.

According to the written statement, the petitioner was born in 1988 and works as a daily wage labourer living in rented accommodation in Borbori, Guwahati.

He stated that river erosion had forced his family to migrate from Charai Khasara to Dhobakura, then to Ghugudoba, and eventually to Hashdoba, where he attended Class 5 at Hashdoba Anchalik High School in 1999. To support his claims, both the petitioner and his father provided oral testimonies as witnesses.

WHICH KEY DOCUMENTS DID GAUHATI HC DECLARE INADMISSIBLE?

The most critical of the 15 submitted documents declared inadmissible were the petitioner's 1951 NRC records.

Assam built a National Register of Citizens after the Census of 1951. An updated NRC was published in 2019 for which links to the 1951 Register had to be established or legacy data with pre-1971 documents had to be provided by people to prove their Indian citizenship. The NRC was updated to weed out illegal immigrants.

The Gauhati High Court upheld the Tribunal’s finding that "the NRC of 1951 were a photocopy/computer generated details, which was not proved in accordance with law".

The judgment noted that the submission was merely a "computer generated statement" bearing Image IDs and the note "Generated by DLDD Version 6.0". The DLDD stands for Digitised Legacy Data Development and typically appears on printed legacy data slips or digitised document extracts from the NRC updation process.

Referring to this document, the court held that "without a certificate as required under Section 65B of the Evidence Act, 1872 corresponding to Section 63(4) of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023, would have no evidentiary value".

Furthermore, the court observed that "NRC extract produced to prove domicile in India is inadmissible in evidence", citing Section 15 of the Census Act, 1948, which explicitly bars the admissibility of Census records. This rejection of the 1951 NRC fundamentally undermined the petitioner's claim of ancestral lineage.

Alongside the 1951 NRC, four other vital documents were discarded. The first was the 2017 school certificate, which was rejected because the petitioner failed to produce the headmaster, who issued it as a witness. Furthermore, he failed to produce the school admission register to legally support the entries.

The 1973 land purchase deed was also discarded due to a lack of clear lineage linkage. The tribunal noted there was "no explanation that if the land existed, why the land did not devolve on the legal heirs of petitioner's grandfather".

The court also observed that no land revenue records were produced to show how the property devolved or if the petitioner’s father had relinquished his share, rendering the deed insufficient to prove a citizenship linkage.

In addition, the PAN and EPIC cards were also rejected as the Court held that it had been "well settled" they are "not proof of citizenship".

MAJOR DISCREPANCIES FOUND IN SUBMITTED VOTER LISTS

The Gauhati High Court highlighted several glaring discrepancies in the voter lists submitted by the petitioner. One major issue was inconsistent age records. The judgment pointed out that a family member listed as 25 years old on the 1979 voter list was shown as 29 years old on the 1989 list.

Adding to the doubts, the lists contained names of individuals for whom "there was no pleading or evidence" that they were part of the family. Most significantly, the family’s names appeared across three different villages — Dhobakura, Ghugudoba, and Hashdoba — without any credible connection. The Court observed that the families in these "three distinct places" appeared to be entirely different, making it impossible to establish a continuous lineage from the pre-1966 period.

These contradictions led both the Foreigners Tribunal and the High Court to reject the voter lists as reliable proof of citizenship.

Furthermore, the oral testimony of the petitioner’s father was also found insufficient. The High Court ruled that citizenship claims cannot rest solely on oral statements, emphasising that "documentary evidence must be proved from record and not solely by oral testimony".

In any case, the year of petitioner's birth was shown as 1988 on the submitted PAN card, which his father failed to confirm. Furthermore, the Court also held that, upon cross-examination, the petitioner's father was found to be a different person than the individual whose name appeared on the 2015 voter list, despite his name appearing on the 1970 voter list.

The Gauhati High Court ruled that the petitioner failed to show any legal infirmity in the Foreigners Tribunal’s order. "The petitioner has not been able to establish that the learned Tribunal had committed any patent error in appreciating the pleadings and evidence on record," the judgment stated.

After examining the entire case, the court found "no material to hold that the opinion assailed in this writ petition is bad on facts or in law". It noted that the petitioner’s counsel "could not show that the said opinion was perverse on any count whatsoever." The court dismissed the writ petition, upholding the Foreigners Tribunal’s decision that the petitioner is not an Indian citizen. Thus, despite providing 15 documents and oral testimony, the man was found to be a foreigner, and not an Indian citizen.

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