The CAA enables the fast-tracking of the citizenship process for Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christans from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, who entered India before December 31, 2014. However, Assam, which shares a long border with Bangladesh and where the question of “illegal immigration” from the neighbouring country has long been a contentious issue, has different processes for declaring people who entered the state after March 24, 1971 – the cut-off date for citizenship as determined by the Assam Accord – as “foreigners” and “illegal immigrants”. Among these are trials by Foreigners Tribunals to determine whether suspected “illegal immigrants” referred to them by the border police are Indian nationals or foreigners.

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said Monday that only eight people from the state have applied for citizenship under the CAA’s special provisions in the four months since the rules were notified. He went on to say that of these eight, only two have appeared for interviews as part of the process.

On July 5, the Home and Political Department of the Assam government wrote to the Special Director General of Police (Border) of the Assam police, stating that people eligible to apply for citizenship under the provisions of the CAA not be referred to Foreigners Tribunals and that a special registry of such people be maintained.

“…the border police may not forward cases of persons belonging to Hindu, Sikhs, Buddhist, Parsi, Jain and Christian communities who entered India prior to 31st December 2014 directly to Foreigners Tribunals. Such persons may be advised to apply to the prescribed form on the [CAA] portal… for citizenship, which will be decided by the Government of India based on facts and circumstances of the case. A separate register may be maintained for this category of persons,” states the communication by Partha Pratim Majumdar, Secretary to the Home and Political Department.

The letter states that this “differential treatment” will not apply to people who entered Assam after December 31 2014, “irrespective of their religion”. “Once detected, they should be straight away forwarded to the jurisdictional Foreigners Tribunal for further action,” it said.

About the aim of the instruction, a government source said, “The new law is very clear that people of the specified communities, who entered before December 31, 2014, are eligible to apply and are not to be prosecuted. But many people will not even be aware of the provision and this direction basically allows for that sensitization.”

The Foreigners Tribunals of Assam are quasi-judicial bodies which determine whether a person presented before them is a “foreigner” or an Indian citizen. The tribunals receive two kinds of cases – those referred to them by the border police when they suspect someone of being a foreigner, and those related to people listed as ‘Doubtful (D)’ voters in electoral rolls.

Speaking to the media on Monday, CM Sarma said, “Anybody who has come into India before 2015, they have the first right to apply for citizenship. If they do not apply, then we lodge a case against them. This is a statutory instruction.”

He said that even those currently facing proceedings in Foreigners Tribunals should first be given a chance to apply for citizenship under the CAA, but that the state government is not authorised to pass directions to the tribunals.

However, he said it was unlikely that such people would seek to get citizenship under the CAA, arguing that Hindu Bengalis in particular are more likely to want to complete the due procedure and establish that they were already citizens.

“Almost all Hindu Bengalis, whoever we have approached, have said ‘we are Indians, we have documents’. They would like to continue with proceedings instead of applying under the CAA… We have done outreach programmes from our party’s side in the Barak Valley, but no one is applying,” he said.

In the Assembly session held in February this year, the Assam government had submitted that the 100 FTs in Assam had disposed of 3,37,186 cases by the end of last year and that 1,59,353 people had been declared foreigners by them. It had submitted that 94,149 cases are pending before the FTs.