A Constitution Bench led by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud has scheduled hearings for a series of petitions challenging the constitutionality of Section 6A of the Citizenship Act, 1955, starting from October 17.
Section 6A, a unique provision, was incorporated into the 1955 Act as part of the ‘Assam Accord.’ The ‘Assam Accord’ stemmed from a Memorandum of Settlement reached on August 15, 1985, between the then Rajiv Gandhi government and leaders of the Assam Movement. This accord aimed to safeguard and preserve Assamese culture, heritage, language, and social identity. It marked the culmination of a six-year-long protest by the All Assam Students Union, which sought to identify and repatriate illegal immigrants, primarily from neighboring Bangladesh, residing in the state.
The Union government maintains the validity of Section 6A and has urged the court to dismiss the petitions, which were filed nearly four decades after the enactment of Section 6A.
These petitions challenge the “discriminatory” nature of Section 6A, particularly concerning the granting of citizenship to illegal immigrants. The petitioners, including Assam Public Works and others, contend that this special provision violates Article 6 of the Constitution, which establishes the cutoff date for granting citizenship to immigrants as July 19, 1948.
One of the parties involved in the case, the Assam Sanmilita Mahasangha, a civil society organization based in Guwahati, called for the updating of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) for Assam based on the 1951 NRC rather than the electoral rolls of March 1971.
In December 2014, the Supreme Court formulated 13 questions addressing various concerns related to the constitutionality of Section 6A. These questions encompassed issues such as whether the provision diluted the political rights of Assam’s citizens, violated the cultural rights of the Assamese people, and whether the influx of illegal migrants into India constituted external aggression and internal disturbance, among others.
In 2015, a three-judge Bench of the court referred the case to a Constitution Bench for further consideration.
