GUWAHATI: The Supreme Court has permitted a woman, declared “foreigner” by a Foreigners Tribunal in Assam, to file a review petition in Gauhati High Court against the judgment which upheld the tribunal’s order.
The apex court also allowed the petitioner to approach the Supreme Court again, challenging the main order as well as the High Court judgment, in case she fails in the review petition.
The petitioner, Jasmin Begum, was declared a foreigner by a Foreigners’ Tribunal in Morigaon, on January 25, 2019.
The Tribunal held that the woman could not trace her ancestry to Indian citizens residing in Assam before March 25, 1971 (the cut-off date for eligibility for inclusion in the National Register of Citizens) and that she “miserably failed to establish her link with her father and mother” and declared her a “foreigner who entered India after March 25, 1971.”
Thereafter, the Tribunal directed the “district authority to take necessary steps to deport her to the immediate territory.”
It may be mentioned that the proceedings against her were initiated on a reference made by the Morigaon superintendent of police back in the year 1998.
The Tribunal further held that the 11 documents produced by Jasmin Begum did not prove her Indian citizenship.
The woman had claimed that her parents’ names were entered in the voters list of 1965 and that she referred to the name, ‘Mazeda Begum’ in the voters’ list of 1965 as her mother’s name.
But the Tribunal did not act on the voter’s list entry saying that the petitioner, in her oral evidence, cited her mother’s name as ‘Mazeda Sultana Begum’, and not ‘Mazeda Begum.’
The Tribunal also did not accept the school transfer certificate (issued by school headmistress A. Begum on October 1, 2018) produced by the petitioner saying that the “contents of the certificate is not proved by the concerned headmistress.”