Why Gauhati High Court Upholds Assam Man’s Foreigner Tag Despite 15 Documents To Claim Citizenship

Guwahati: The Gauhati High Court has confirmed a Foreigners Tribunal’s decision declaring an Assam resident a foreigner, despite the man presenting 15 separate documents in an effort to prove he was an Indian citizen. A division bench of Justice Kalyan Rai Surana and Justice Shamima Jahan dismissed the writ petition filed by the man, who works as a daily wage labourer, concluding that the evidence he placed on record was either legally inadmissible or inadequate to establish citizenship.

The petitioner, who lives in rented accommodation near Guwahati, had reportedly relied on both oral testimony and a substantial documentary record. His submissions included computerised copies of the 1951 National Register of Citizens (NRC) naming his father and grandparents, certified extracts of voter lists spanning 1966 to 2017, a 2017 school certificate, a PAN card, and an elector’s photo identity card (EPIC). He also produced his father as a witness to support his claim of lineage. 

In the order, the bench held that none of the documents successfully connected the petitioner to his claimed ancestry. The court stated 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”.

Documents Submitted To Establish Domicile

As per reports, to establish his Indian citizenship before the Foreigners Tribunal, the petitioner furnished a set of 15 documents. These documents included computerised copies of the 1951 NRC that featured the names of his father and grandparents, along with certified copies of voter lists from 1996 to 2017 that carried the names of his family members.

In addition, the petitioner reportedly submitted an original land purchase deed from 1973 executed by his grandfather, a school certificate dated 2017 from a high school, his PAN card, and his EPIC or voter’s card. In his written statement, the petitioner stated that he was born in 1988 and earns his living as a daily wage labourer while staying in rented premises in Guwahati's Borbori.

He explained that his family had been compelled to shift repeatedly due to river erosion, moving first from Charai Khasara to Dhobakura, then to Ghugudoba, and finally to Hashdoba. He also informed the tribunal that he had studied Class 5 at Hashdoba Anchalik High School in 1999. Both the petitioner and his father appeared as witnesses and gave oral testimonies to back his claims.

Court Declares 1951 NRC And Key Papers Inadmissible

Among the 15 documents, the most crucial ones were found to be inadmissible by the court, particularly the 1951 NRC records. Assam had prepared an NRC following the Census of 1951. An updated NRC was published in 2019, for which people were required to establish links to the 1951 register or provide legacy documents from before 1971 to prove Indian citizenship. Notably, the exercise was undertaken then to identify illegal immigrants in Assam.

The Gauhati High Court upheld the tribunal’s view that “the NRC of 1951 was a photocopy or computer-generated details, which was not proved in accordance with law”. The judgment recorded that the submission was merely a “computer-generated statement” bearing image IDs and a note reading “Generated by DLDD Version 6.0”. The DLDD referred to Digitised Legacy Data Development and usually appeared on printed legacy data slips or digitised extracts from the NRC updation process.

Referring to the record, the court claimed to have 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”. Moreover, the court observed that an “NRC extract produced to prove domicile in India is inadmissible in evidence”, citing Section 15 of the Census Act, 1948, which expressly barred the admissibility of census records. The rejection of the 1951 NRC weakened the petitioner’s claim of ancestral lineage.

Apart from this, 4 other vital documents were reportedly also set aside, which included the 2017 school certificate, which was rejected because the petitioner did not produce the headmaster who had issued it as a witness, nor did he produce the school admission register to legally support the entries. The 1973 land purchase deed was discarded for want of a clear link in the family line. 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 further observed that no land revenue records were produced to show how the property had devolved or whether the petitioner’s father had given up his share, making the deed insufficient to establish a citizenship link. The PAN and EPIC cards were also rejected, with the court holding that it had been “well settled” that they are “not proof of citizenship”.

Inconsistencies In Voter Lists And Oral Testimony

The Gauhati High Court drew attention to several discrepancies in the voter lists submitted by the petitioner. One of the main problems related to inconsistent age records, as 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.

Compounding the doubts, the lists contained names of persons for whom “there was no pleading or evidence” that they were part of the family. Most importantly, the family’s names appeared across 3 different villages, namely Dhobakura, Ghugudoba, and Hashdoba, without any credible connection. The court reportedly observed that the families in these “3 distinct places” appeared to be entirely different, making it impossible to establish a continuous lineage from the pre-1966 period.

Such contradictions led both the Foreigners Tribunal and the High Court to dismiss the voter lists as reliable proof of citizenship. The oral testimony of the petitioner’s father was also deemed insufficient, as the High Court ruled that citizenship claims cannot rest solely on oral statements, stressing that “documentary evidence must be proved from record and not solely by oral testimony”.

In any event, the year of the petitioner’s birth was shown as 1988 on the submitted PAN card, which his father failed to confirm. Furthermore, the court held that, upon cross-examination, the petitioner’s father was found to be a different person from the person whose name appeared on the 2015 voter list, even though his name appeared on the 1970 voter list.

No Legal Infirmity In Tribunal Order, Says High Court

The Gauhati High Court concluded that the petitioner had 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 matter, the court reportedly 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 furnishing 15 documents and oral testimony, the man was held to be a foreigner, and not an Indian citizen.