In a long, costly bureaucratic process – India’s government looked into the citizenship status of almost 33 million people in the northeastern state of Assam.
29 million were able to prove that they, or their parents, lived in the region prior to 1971. But 4 million could not, and now face a sort of citizenship limbo.
CGTN’s Shweta Bajaj reports.
To discuss all of this:
- Sushil Pandit is a journalist and co-founder of Roots-in-Kashmir.
- Suchitra Vijayan is a lawyer and founding director of The Polis Project, and recently has been through India’s Assam state.
- Rana Ayyub is a journalist and writer
- Sadanand Dhume is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
For more:
India’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party has been quick to seize on the political opportunity provided by the release of a list that effectively strips four million people, mostly Bengali origin Muslims, of their citizenship, says @HartoshSinghBal https://t.co/9T9JRdiHzI
— NYT Opinion (@nytopinion) August 10, 2018
India's citizenship test in Assam state curtailed the rights of four million people. Is the government's approach in determining who's an actual Indian and who's not reliable enough? https://t.co/nqsyMQ8x55
— TRT World (@trtworld) August 10, 2018