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The long process that seeks to purify the state of Assam , in northeastern India, of clandestine immigrants has come to an end this Saturday with the publication of a census that denies the nationality to almost 2 million inhabitants of this region of deep anti-immigrant feelings

After more than a year of uncertainty, citizens have come to the centers to verify their inclusion amid strong security measures, with police officers deployed throughout the territory to prevent the agitation of the inhabitants.

The final version of the National Registry of Citizens (NRC) has confirmed the nationality of 31.1 million inhabitants who have been able to prove that they or their parents live in the territory since before 1971, when the neighbor's independence war took place Bangladesh Meanwhile, 1,906,657 have been left out of the final version of the registry, as reported by a NCR coordinator Prateek Hajela .

This number includes those who have been denied inclusion in the census, as well as people who did not make registration applications. Opposition parties and activists have shown from the beginning their concern that the process be manipulated to persecute minorities of Muslims and Bengalis residing in Assam.

The publication of the final list, after more than a year of challenges comes as the second major step of the second term of the Prime Minister of India, the Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi, who a few weeks ago abolished the autonomy of the Kashmir region.

A population of internally displaced persons

Now, without certainty about the future of people who have been left out of the registry, many inhabitants fear deportations or detentions of the excluded. The central government has said that it is too early to consider the excluded as "foreigners", however it has indicated that the claims of these people will remain in the hands of hundreds of courts for foreigners that will be installed as of Monday.

"People whose names have been excluded from the NRC will have the opportunity to present their appeal and be heard in the Foreigners' Court , according to the instructions of the Ministry of Interior, " Assam government chief Sarbananda Sonowal said in a statement. . As of now, people excluded from the census have 120 days to submit their claims to these courts.

The Amnesty International (AI) organization has questioned the actions of these special courts to review the cases of excluded persons, and has indicated that several reports "have shown that the proceedings before the Foreigner Courts are arbitrary, and their orders are partial and discriminatory. "

"While the Government of India has the sovereign right to update the NRC, it must ensure that it does not deprive a person of his or her nationality for arbitrary or vague reasons, diminishing due process or if such deprivation can generate a stateless person," he said in a statement the representative of AI in India, Aakar Patel . Patel draws attention to the reality of many of the inhabitants of Assam, forced to complete records that establish divorced demands of reality for many of the inhabitants of this region of the country.

Assam has a significant population of internally displaced persons , the product of natural disasters or outbreaks of violence, which left their homes and belongings behind. "It is unreasonable to expect people fleeing violence and natural disasters to retain original half-century-old identity documents," Patel added.

In a letter addressed to the Indian Foreign Ministry in June, four UN special rapporteurs said that local authorities "are considered to be especially hostile towards Muslims and people of Bengali descent" and that they can manipulate the system to "try to exclude true Indian citizens of the NRC. "

The preparation of the census dates back to an agreement signed in 1985 between the Indian Government and the Student Union of Assam (AASU) , which led a movement against undocumented immigrants. According to the document, foreigners who had entered the state after 1971, when the war of independence took place in neighboring Bangladesh, should be considered clandestine and deported immigrants .

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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