India: Debating passport issue, inviting NRC nationwide

With no provocation and essential public queries, India's foreign ministry threw up a debate relating to the passport as an incompetent document to claim citizenship in the south Asian country. On the occasion of 14th Passport Sewa Divas, the ministry of external affairs (MEA) stated that an Indian passport should be treated primarily as a  travel document only. An Indian passport cannot be claimed as a sole document for  citizenship, as the practiced laws occasionally allow the Union government in New Delhi to issue Indian passports to non-citizens also. The issue gained instant momentum as millions started debating on mainstream and social media questioning if not a passport, which is issued after some mandatory procedures for verification, what else will determine Indian citizenship. Is it an inherent approach of New Delhi to introduce a nationwide screening of citizenship in the coming days?

Under the law of the land, Indian citizenship is  administered by the 1955 Citizenship Act and the passports are issued under the 1967 Passports Act. Indian citizenship is defined by the Constitution (of India) and the citizenship laws, which can be acquired by various means like birth, descent, naturalization, registration or incorporation of territory in the country. A large majority of Indians enjoy citizens by birth and hence they do not ask for citizenship certificates. Moreover,  India does not pursue a universal citizenship certificate to all of its citizens. For records, less than 10 percent of India's over 1.4 billion people possess passports. But yes, a passport is still recognized as the most trustworthy piece for claiming citizenship in India. However, the Passports Act permits the authority to grant a passport to a non- citizen (under specific circumstances) and hence every Indian passport holder may not necessarily be a citizen of the country.

Federal government of  the constitutional republic of 1.4 billion people had already clarified that neither  Aadhaar- PAN-driving licence nor a voter identity card can be accepted as solid proof of Indian citizenship. So here comes the clue, New Delhi probably plans to create a particular document, which would be endorsed by the National Register of Citizens (NRC), for claiming citizenship. But the  NRC, prepared in 1951 across India (soon after a nation-wide Census) with the names of genuine Indian citizens, has not been updated all over the country.

Moreover, the NRC updating process in Assam (between 2015 and 2019) mired into controversy from financial mishandling to inclusion of illegal migrants in the list as original inhabitants of the north-eastern State. Even though the process was 'monitored/supervised' by the Supreme Court of India, it engulfed  a number of irregularities, and amazingly the last draft of NRC is yet to be certified by the Registrar General of India (RGI). If the NRC updating process needs to be rolled out across the country, the government should learn from the mismanagements that took place in Assam and then only proceed further.

The disagreement started as soon as the Assam NRC draft was published on 30 July 2018 and its supplementary list surfaced on the midnight of 31 August 2019, where 19,06,657 were left out of the list. Altogether 3,30,27,661 people participated in the exercise for their inclusion in the NRC. The NRC in Assam was updated following the direction of SC with an aim to detect all illegal citizens with the cut-off date 25 March 1971. It engaged over 50,000 government employees and around 6000 part-time workers which cost New Delhi Rs 16 billion. Prateek Hajela, a 1995 batch Indian Administration Service (IAS) officer of the Assam-Meghalaya cadre was appointed as the coordinator in 2019. Soon after the NRC supplementary list was released, Hajela was relocated to his home-state (Madhya Pradesh) fearing his security in Assam. Later, the State government allowed him to enjoy the voluntary retirement benefits.

The first break came  from none other than Hajela's immediate successor in the office of State NRC  coordinator Hitesh Devsarma, who raised the issue of mishandling the process by tampered software with an aim to entertain a large number of illegal migrants (read Bangladeshi Muslim settlers). According to Devsarma, also a retired IAS officer, an important verification mechanism (Family Tree Matching) was also compromised by Hajela and hence he demanded a probe by the National Investigation Agency and the Directorate of Enforcement against Hajela and his associates. Devsarma, whose multiple complaints are yet to registered by Assam Police, found solace when his allegation of financial irregularities were later authenticated by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG), which pointed out  indiscretion to the tune of Rs 2.6 billion during the NRC updating process. The highest national audit body in its report (year ending 31 March 2020) also recommended legal actions against Hajela and the Wipro limited (which functioned as the system integrator).

Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma also admitted that  the said NRC was faulty. Stating that Hajela prepared a flawed NRC, Sarma asserted it could  jeopardize national security and also harm the indigenous people. Lately, a writ petition asking for the comprehensive (100%) re-verification of the NRC was accepted by the apex court, where Devsarma (both in his personal capacity and as  representative of a large number of indigenous people in Assam) appealed  for a time-bound verification to achieve an error-free and a reliable NRC for Assam. The SC had already issued notices to the centre, Assam government, State NRC coordinator and the RGI seeking their responses. It actually proves the authenticity of an allegation against some individuals engaged in a massive exercise which was directed and later keenly observed by the SC itself.

Another unpleasant error, detected by the CAG, had taken place during the tedious process where the temporary workers, employed as data entry operators (DEOs) were deprived of legally valid salaries. Those DEOs were offered Rs 5,500 to 9,100 per month per person (which is below the country's minimum legal wages), but contrary to it Wipro received Rs 14,500 per month per DEO. The total volume of siphoned money (even after deducting the reasonable commission to the system integrator) is estimated to be over Rs 1 billion, which should be in the pockets of Wipro or sub-contractor Integrated System & Services. It needs to be investigated properly as the country's apex court  was understandably monitoring the exercise where misuse of rights took place. Moreover, the DEOs must get their dues irrespective of the fate of Assam NRC (whether it is accepted, re-verified or even rejected).

Leaving aside a few exceptions, the media remains shy of  reporting the financial malpractices taking place in the process. Majority of local media persons even spread misinformation (reasons best known to them only) that the NRC supplementary list was the final one and there was no space for authentication. At least one Guwahati-based television host shamelessly lobbied for accepting it without verification. Later he was named and shamed on social media for weeks as a beneficiary of NRC updation scam, but the otherwise aggressive orator remained silent to those allegations (not done till date). He even authored a book praising Hajela's job as unparalleled, probably with a push for some national recognitions to the technocrat turned bureaucrat. Hence it's assumed that a genuine probe would unearth all misdeeds and identify guilty individuals, who wanted to cheat the nation for their selfish gains during the much hyped NRC updating exercise in Assam.