National Register of Citizens (NRC)

In 1951, independent India carried out its first Census operations.  A National Register of Citizens (NRC), containing the names of Indian citizens, also came into existence in the same year, viz. 1951, under a directive from the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).  The Citizenship Act 1955, and the Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules 2003, will govern the preparation of the current updating of the NRC for the State of Assam.  Legacy data  form  the foundation of this updating, and comprise, as proofs of presence in Assam or in any other part of  India on or before 24 March 1971 the names of persons ( or their descendants) who appear in the NRC 1951 or in the Electoral Rolls or in the admissible documents up to the above noted date.

A person who wants inclusion of his/her name in the updated NRC, has to provide the Legacy data confirming his or her ancestor’s name in the pre-1971 documents noted above. NRC compilation is divided into four phases: (1) Distribution and Receipt of Application Form; (2) Verification; (3) Publication of Draft NRC and Receipt of Claims/Objections; (4) Final Publication of NRC.  Digitised government data provide a transparent and technology-based process of verification of the legacy data submitted by an NRC applicant.  Thus, all potential citizens are given a fair opportunity.

The NRC update is a highly controversial issue in Assam and various parts of India, especially in the neighbouring States of Assam.  The NRC published in 1951 lacks total validity because it is not deemed to be complete.  Members of indigenous tribes were not in a position to submit pre-1971 documents to prove their identity.  The Supreme Court of India has affirmed that, in accordance with 2003 Citizenship Rules, members of the Tea Tribes of Assam are to be treated as original inhabitants of Assam.

Since 1951, Assam is the only Indian State attempting an NRC update.  This was the principal consequence of the 1985 Assam Accord, which itself was a product of the six-year long anti-foreigners agitation in Assam.  Although the objective of update is to identify, detain and deport illegal Bangladeshi migrants, Muslim leaders denounce the move as an instrument to render the Muslim community stateless.

The issue has appeared and reappeared in various forms since 1905, when India’s Viceroy Lord Curzon divided Bengal, merged a part of it with Assam, and created a Muslim-majority province in north-east India.  Bengali Hindus fought hard against the 1905 Bengal Partition, and got it repealed in 1911.  Bengali Hindus thus saved the Assamese from Muslim domination, and preserved Assam’s identity and dignity.

In 1937, due to the introduction of provincial autonomy under the 1935 Government of India Act, the Congress Party came to power in Assam.  An Assamese political leader became the Chief Minister.  But he could not counteract the domination of Bengali Hindus and Bengali Muslims.  One wonders whether the alienation of Assamese Hindus from Bengali Hindus, originating at that time, probably persisted till the Partition of British India in 1947, and Assamese leaders did not object to Sylhet (including Bengali Hindus) being joined to Pakistan.  But this meant an irreparable loss for Assamese Hindus as Muslim influx from Bangladesh upset the demographic balance in Assam, and provided an impetus to the updating of NRC.  At this juncture, Bengali-speaking Hindus and Assamese-speaking Hindus should make a common cause.

The circumstances of the Partition of 1947 (as also pledges from India’s political leaders) confer on Hindus (and other non-Muslims) in Bangladesh an inalienable right to come to India as refugees, and then settle down.  More so because East Bengal/East Pakistan/Bangladesh has been carrying out ceaseless and ruthless pogroms against Hindus (an overwhelming majority of persecuted non-Muslims) in order to drive them out of the country.  In the early years of independence, some law makers in India had the pragmatism to maintain a distinction between Hindus (refugees) and Muslims (infiltrators). The Immigrants (Expulsion from Assam) Act of 1950 drew this distinction, and treated Muslim migrants as illegal aliens.  But this farsightedness of the Indian authorities did not last long; the Act of 1950 was repealed in 1957.  Yet, for some years, remnants of this farsightedness survived, unpublicised, in the shape of an administrative order of the Government of India, which empowered a district magistrate to grant citizenship to Hindus from East Pakistan residing in India for more than six months.  When authorities rescinded this order within a few years, they acquiesced in the creation of a situation in which, eventually, Muslim infiltrators would move to be a menace to India’s security. In Assam, even before Partition, self-seeking politicians orchestrated organised moves for decades to lure Muslims away from East Bengal to Assam, and thereby alter Assam’s demographic balance.  These moves persisted after 1947, and rendered unjustified the tendency of liberals to ignore religion while examining the issue of migration.¹

In 1964, the Government of Assam enacted the Prevention of Infiltration from Pakistan (PIP) Act.  The fate of this PIP Act demonstrated how Muslim leaders could use political blackmail to sabotage any effort by authorities to strengthen security by curbing infiltration.  Bimala Prasad Chaliha, Assam’s chief minister, played an energetic part in arranging deportations of a large number of infiltrators to East Pakistan.  He did not respect Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s desire for a liberal approach towards Muslim migrants, for, as Chaliha stressed, a severe threat to Assam’s demography and culture was emerging. But Chaliha’s determination failed to override the manoeuvres of Muslim legislators to stall the anti-infiltrator programme.  Chaliha’s Congress Party did not enjoy a stable majority in the legislature, and his health was fragile.  Therefore, 20 Muslim legislators of the Congress Party (in a legislature of 126 members) could threaten Chaliha with defections leading to the collapse of Chaliha’s ministry. The PIP Act became inoperative in a few months, after it came into force.²

Assam’s Muslim politicians capitalised on this preference of many legislators for short-term political gains.  Over the following decades, infiltration continued (and it continues till today).  It aggravated not only the threat to Assam’s cultural identity, but also to India’s unity and territorial integrity.  Assam’s Hindu politicians were so chronically short sighted on this matter that they ignored repeated warnings by distinguished public servants since 1931.  C.S. Mullan, Assam’s Superintendent of Census Operations, observed in the 1931 census report on Assam that the invasion of Muslim immigrants from East Bengal was likely to destroy the culture and civilisation of Assam.  Mohammad Saadulla, a Muslim League leader, remained Assam’s Premier for much of the time from 1937 to 1946.  He arranged for large-scale distribution of government land to Muslims in Assam, who were lured from East Bengal by promises of huge land grants.  During the Second World War, Saadulla claimed he had aided the British war effort by growing more food with the help of Muslim cultivators migrating from East Bengal to Assam.  This provoked India’s Viceroy, Lord Wavell, to comment that Saadulla was actually interested in growing more Muslims in Assam. The liberalism of Hindu politicians enabled a large number of Muslims, who fled to East Bengal in the aftermath of Partition, to return to Assam.  Nearly all Muslim migrants, who were pushed out of Assam in the 1950s and early 1960s, returned to Assam surreptitiously—before and after the passing of the abortive PIP Act of 1964.³

It is not unusual to find observers and writers pleading for large heartedness and liberalism in dealing with illegal migrants, because they do not themselves suffer from the consequences of such migration.  In the case of Assam, however, Hindus (and other non-Muslims) themselves remained extraordinarily liberal, while the influx of Muslims caused a dangerous imbalance in Assam’s population. S. L. Shakdher, India’s chief election commissioner, warned in 1978 that foreign nationals would at some stage form a substantial proportion of Assam’s population. Shakdher deplored the fact that politicians clamoured for inclusion of names of foreigners in  Assam’s electoral rolls.  In a few years, as the census reports of India and Bangladesh revealed, the rate of increase of the Muslim population in the border districts of Assam was much higher than that in Bangladesh in 1981-91.  Yet, Assam’s political parties (especially the Congress Party) engaged in a sort of competitive self-destruction, and treated infiltrators as vote banks.  They remained oblivious of the transparent threats to Assam’s cultural identity and India’s territorial integrity.  `The Congress would do everything’, wrote Subir Ghosh, ‘to ensure that their traditional majority vote bank remained intact.’ Even occasional bloodbaths as at Nellie in 1983 (an aberration from the long-practised large heartedness towards infiltrators), failed to deter the Congress Party.  Perhaps the Congress Party secured ironic encouragement from the fact that the evident possibility of large-scale recurrence of the Nellie massacre did not translate itself into actualities.⁴ 

As Assamese students launched a movement to oust illegal migrants, the Congress Party went to extremes to appease the Muslims.  This explains why the Illegal Migrants Determination by Tribunals (IMDT) Act was rushed through the Union legislature in 1983, when there was no representative from Assam in the Lok Sabha because of a boycott of elections by the Assamese.  ‘So,’ writes D. N. Bezboruah, `it was an Act brought against the people of Assam behind the backs of the people of Assam.’ It was an Act that committed incredible treachery against the people of Assam.  The IMDT Act was meticulously designed to be so imperative as to please the Muslims (including infiltrators).  Treachery was abetted by discrimination.  The Foreigners Act of 1946 governed the rest of India, whereas Assam had to swallow the IMDT Act., The former places the onus of proof on illegal migrants, but the latter places the same on the complainant.  A complainant has to move through 11 barriers under the IMDT Act, including the Lower Tribunal, the Appellate Court, and the High Court. Years may elapse before a Quit India notice can be served on an illegal migrant.  The notice again can be contested in a court.  All this—especially with overburdened police officers having little time for investigations, and retired judges in tribunals caring more for prolonging the enjoyment of high salaries than for speedy deportation of infiltrators—may  take a number of  years.  Eventually, when the trial is to begin, thousands of the accused are dead, or not traceable, or have moved elsewhere.  So, during the period from 1983 to 1997, for example, only 2,314 cases could be actually tried by tribunals.  Trials could be completed in 2,260 cases, and only 908 were adjudged to be foreigners.  This figure alone could underline the conspiracy directed against Assam’s culture and India’s security.  The conspiracy was built into the IMDT Act, when it placed the burden of proof on a complainant.  `This,’ wrote Sanjoy Hazarika, `is the exact opposite of what is acceptable internationally, the opposite of good law.  For reasons not very difficult to fathom, the Congress Party firmly supports this flawed concept.’ To take another illustration of the farcical character of the IMDT Act, from 1990 to 1993, only 637 Quit India notices were issued in Assam, although notices could be actually served on only 407 persons.  In contrast, the Foreigners Act of 1946, granting exclusive authority to the police to detect and deport foreigners, could have been used to push out hundreds of thousands of infiltrators during the above noted period, viz. 1983-97.  But the Congress Party decided to protect the Muslims, and leave unprotected Assam’s identity as also India’s territorial integrity.  Apparently, as Subir Ghosh observes, the Congress Party (along with the Leftist parties) have been ‘obsessed with their minority (read, Bangladeshi Muslim) vote bank’.  Sanjoy Hazarika aptly observes: ‘Is the Congress the thekedar of minority interests?  It has the advantage of being a party that has bent over backwards in the past thirty years to accommodate Muslim interests.’⁵

In the 20^th and early 21^st centuries, the distinction of refugees and infiltrators from Bangladesh derives additional justification from the employment of a number of infiltrators by Pakistan, especially the ISI, for the promotion of Islamisation of South Asia as a component of the campaign for worldwide Islamist terrorism (WIT).  Consequently, various attempts at underplaying this distinction, and minimising the threat to India’s national interest from infiltration, are akin to abdication (voluntary or involuntary, selfish or disinterested) in favour of the forces of WIT.  This abdication rests on such observations as (i) that migration has its roots in the Partition of the subcontinent in 1947, (ii) that it is a worldwide phenomenon; and (iii) that migrants are mostly economic refugees.  All these observations are correct, but they can be placed in a proper perspective by the following comments.

• Partition did not resolve the problem of communal (Hindu-Muslim) hostilities.
• Pakistan has significantly accentuated these hostilities by emerging as the principal sponsor of WIT.  Pakistan uses a section of infiltrators (even if they have migrated for predominantly economic reasons) as perpetrators of terrorism, especially in northeast India.  N. Bezboruah rightly remarks “that illegal infiltration from Bangladesh has not taken place only for economic reasons …  Most of it is being orchestrated.  And this is evident from the fact that the ISI is today playing a very large role.  And where is the base of the ISI operations in the northeast?  It is in Bangladesh.’
• The impact of migration in other parts of the world is not exactly comparable to that of infiltration from Bangladesh upon eastern/north eastern India.  For instance, Indian migrants to Britain, Canada and the United States or Mexican migrants to the United States, do not upset the demographic or electoral balance in the host country, nor do some of them emerge as agents of WIT.  As to the use of the adjective `Islamist’ before terrorism, that is enjoined by Pakistan’s  incessant threats of Jihad.⁶

Another way of underplaying the problem of infiltration, and its adverse impact upon security in India’s eastern/northeastern region is to deny it.  In 1981, when The Statesman published a series of reports on infiltration from Bangladesh to West Bengal, and underlined the seriousness of its impact, the chief minister of West Bengal dismissed them as a product of unbridled imagination.  This preference for politics of vote banks (as against the defence of national interest) was carried to an extreme by Assam’s Hiteswar Saikia. Fifteen Pakistan backed Muslim fundamentalist organisations were active in Assam, especially among infiltrators, since 1987.  Saikia pledged to drive out Bangladeshi infiltrators from Assam when he was in opposition.  After he became the chief minister of Assam in 1991, he forgot this pledge, and his political postures amounted to a virtual denial of the menace of infiltration.  No wonder that Sanjoy Hazarika spoke of Hiteswar Saikia as a `stocky politician with the guile of a fox and the organizing skills of an army general’, which he proved as early as 1980 in the general election.  Leaders like Hiteswar Saikia and their associates can go to any extreme to mislead the country on the scale and significance of infiltration.  They manipulated the 1991 census output for Assam.  As D. N. Bezboruah affirms: ‘I have information that there were verbal instructions sent out in the immigrant dominated areas, that only the first wife of the immigrant and her children were to be enumerated and not the subsequent wives and their children.  The other thing that happened is that I know for a fact that in places like Guwahati and Tinsukia, there were high density pockets of population where no enumeration took place. So the combined effect was that it did bring down the population.’⁷

The 1991 census report put the 1981-91 population growth rate (PGR)( in Assam at 18.84 per cent, which was not only much lower than 36.83 per cent in Arunachal Pradesh, and 39.70 per cent in Mizoram (which was inexplicable), but thoroughly incredible  in view of the PGR of 34.98 per cent in Assam  during 1951-61, and 34.95 per cent during 1961-71 (there being no census in Assam in 1981). 

The danger was clear. But the response of the authorities seemed insufficient.  Consequently in late 1998, the Government of Assam, Lieutenant General (Retd.) S. K. Sinha, sent a 42 page report to the President of India, warning against the evil consequences of infiltration from Bangladesh.  This infiltration, as Sinha’s report stressed, was so massive as to disrupt the demographic balance in Assam, blur the identity of its people, and endanger India’s national security. The report noted the preference of some political parties to disregard the seriousness of this danger, even though unchecked infiltration eventually might leave India without any authority over the northeast region.  In a similar vein, early in 1999, the chief minister of Tripura, Manik Sarkar, who belonged to the CPIU-M, stated publicly that terrorists  in northeast India had 24 main camps in Bangladesh as their operational bases.  One deeply disturbing aspect of this allied phenomenon of infiltration-cum-terrorism is, as Prakash Singh observes, the encouragement being given by fundamentalist elements of people to move across the border because they have been propagating the theory of lebensraum, search for living space by Bangladeshis.⁸ 

The failure of India’s ruling party leaders to perceive the depth of threat to India’s national security was abject.  A glaring example was a former chief minister of Assam, Hiteswar Saikia. ‘The Late Hiteswar Saikia,’ stated an editorial in The Statesman of 6 November 2002, `told the assembly there were three million illegal migrants in Assam but corrected himself the next day saying there was not a single infiltrator.’ Such indecisiveness  on the part of political leaders has gradually produced a situation in which, to quote Subir Ghosh, ‘the course of history is today being charted out not by the people of the North-east, but a  venomous, janus-faced entity called Inter-Services Intelligence(ISI)’. The ISI, ensconced in the Pakistan embassy of Dhaka has long been providing, since the early 1990s, military training as well as arms to rebel groups in India’s northeast region.  In the late 1990s, a faction of the Jamaat-e-Ulema-e-Islam, that is Harkatul-e-Jihad-e-Islam (HUJI), with about 15,000 cadres, won recognition as the Bangladesh Taliban.  Evidently, Al-Qaeda struck roots in Bangladesh, posing a serious threat to the security of India’s eastern/northeastern region.  The ISI or Al Qaeda could carry on their terrorist operations in India because of continuous support from the intelligence, police, para-military and military agencies of Bangladesh.  Towards the end of 2002, ISI activities in Bangladesh, targeted on India, became so alarming as to generate one more candid statement on this subject from Manik Sarkar, the chief minister of Tripura, on 21 November.  This was followed by a statement by external affairs, Yashwant Sinha, in Lok Sabha on 27 November. Yashwant Sinha admitted that such terrorist groups as the Al-Qaeda, in collusion with the ISI, were using the Pakistani diplomatic mission in Dhaka as a sanctuary.  He pointed to the dangers of proliferation of madrassas along the India-Bangladesh border, as also to the smuggling of narcotics and fake Indian currency from Bangladesh to India.  Subsequently, India dispatched a formal letter (demarche) providing details about Al-Qaeda operations in Bangladesh and their impact on northeast India.  While Bangladesh denies the launching of anti-India activities from its territory, and assures that it will not allow such activities, documents seized from arrested militants provide ample evidence of ISI operations in Bangladesh directed against India.  Tripura chief minister, Manik Sarkar, was right when he told a press conference in Kolkata on 4 January 2003 that `Bangladesh might deny the militants’ presence in its territory for diplomatic reason, but in the long run, this will not benefit them’.⁹

Sarbananda Sonowal, an MP of Assam Gana Parishad (AGP), field a writ petition in the Supreme Court of India, challenging the constitutional validity of the IMDT Act of 1983.  In 2005, a three-Judge Bench of the Supreme Court unanimously declared the Act as well as the rules framed in 1984 as violative of the Constitution.  The Supreme Court judgement ordered that all the tribunals set up under the IMDT Act would `cease to function’ with immediate effect.  Only 16 tribunals secured governance approval, although the Act provided for 30 tribunals.  The cases under the inoperative tribunals would be transferred to tribunals under the Foreigners Act.  Let it be stressed that the execution of the IMDT Act was thoroughly defective of the above noted 16 tribunals, as late as 1998, not more than five started functioning by 1998.  The other 11 tribunals remained inoperative, because each Bench had one judge, although the stipulated strength was two.¹⁰

Bangladeshi immigrants created serious political-cultural imbalances in Assam, and some poor immigrants fell prey to inducements by moneyed militant leaders.  Yet, rulers in national/state capitals persisted in using them as vote banks and pampering them, especially with the cover of the IMDT Act.  When the Supreme Court of India nullified the constitutional validity of this outrageous legislation, rulers (mostly belonging to the Congress Party) made a suicidal move—they amended the order on Foreigners Tribunal following the rules of the Foreigners Act, and continued to appease illegal migrants.¹¹

It is in this historical background that one has to judge the 2018 NRC in Assam, and consider it national/international implications.  A statement by India’s army chief, General Bipin Rawat, made at a seminar in New Delhi on 24 February 2018, is to be deemed valuable in this context.  According to Rawat, Pakistan supports infiltration by Bangladeshis in  north-east India as a component of its proxy war against India, and it receives China’s  assistance in this venture.¹² As a part of northeast India, Assam had no Muslim majority district in 1971, but as many as nine Muslim majority districts in 2011.  This is sufficient to comprehend the significance of NRC in 2018 in Assam.  On  20  March 2018, an Assamese legislators, Shiladitya Deb, observed that Bangladeshi Muslims, residing illegally in Assam, were guilty of rape of women, and that the incidents of rape were on the increase in Assam due to the presence of these illegal migrants.  Shiladitya added that these Bangladeshi Muslims were connected with 80 per cent of crimes in the whole of India.¹³

            What Shiladitya said must not be dismissed as a sentimental outburst.  This becomes ardent from a special order issued by the Union Government on 28 February 2018.  This order urges upon Assam’s intelligence agencies to observe extraordinary caution at the final stage (i.e. the present stage) of identification of Bangladeshi citizens as also accelerate the detection of aliens.  On 20 March 2018 at the Lok Sabha, the Union Minister of State for Home, Kiran Rijiju, disclosed this order, which, furthermore, recommended restrictions on the movement of already identified foreigners.  The Minister did not talk of imprisonment of these foreigners, but the order insisted on confining their movements within prescribed boundaries.  Most remarkably, the biographical and biometric data of these foreigners were to be registered.  The fake documents as also lawfully acquired (but invalid) documents were to be confiscated by State Governments.  All information about illegally procured documents, especially Aadhaar cards were to be immediately communicated by State Governments to the Union Home Ministry.  The Union government, as Rijiju stated, forwarded to concerned State governments the revised operating procedures about taking special legal measures to detect and expel the infiltrators.¹⁴

One of the difficulties faced by Assam’s NRC coordinator, Prateek Hajela, is the lack of response from other state governments whose documents have been sent for verification. West Bengal is the state where the maximum number of documents await verification. Hajela, however, cannot wait indefinitely for verification of documents by other State authorities.  In order to forestall the delay in NRC preparation, Hajela has to think of verification at the level of district magistrates.  The task of Hajela is far from easy, as apparent from the harassment faced by people in the matter of confirmation of ancestral ties.  For, some people in the Barak Valley may have to rush to Brahmaputra Valley, and vice versa.  Assurances have been provided by the authorities to take steps towards the minimisation of such harassment.¹⁵

Shiladitya’s complaint about molestation of women derived great impetus from proceedings in the legislative assembly on 26 March 2018.  The ruling party did not hesitate to affirm that in case of rape victims the attention should be focussed on the accused, and that in the recentmost six cases all the accused were Muslims.  The Congress Party legislators staged a walkout in protest.¹⁶

Many Bengali Hindus, especially, those whose friends or relatives have been left out of the first draft of the NRC, raise an outcry about the validity of the NRC as a whole.  To some extent, this results from their experiences of fleeing from East Bengal/East Pakistan/Bangladesh.  To some extent, again, it results from simple ignorance about the complexity of the process of NRC, which inevitably produces errors, apart from the usual bureaucratic apathy.¹⁷

Complaints, however, miss the great significance of the two notifications of the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, dated 7 September 2015.  These notifications underline the decision of the Union Government to grant some exemptions to Bangladeshi and Pakistani nationals belonging to minority communities.  Citing humanitarian grounds, one notification is issued under the Passport (Entry into India) Act,, 1920 and the other under the Foreigners Act 1946.  Exemptions are granted to those members of the aforesaid minority communities, who entered into India on or before 31 December 2014, from relevant provisions of rules and order made under two abovenoted Acts of 1920 and 1946, in matters of their entry and residence in India.  The Government of India has acted in this fashion due to  authentic reports of persecution of  Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Jains, Parsis and Buddhists in Pakistan and Bangladesh, forcing them, sometimes out of fear of persecution, to find shelter in India with or without valid travel documents, or with documents, though valid, have gone beyond the date of expiry.¹⁸

The NRC process in Assam is on. If the cultural identity of eastern/northeastern India is to be preserved, and the security of India safeguarded, the NRC press has to be replicated in the whole of eastern/northeastern India.

Endnotes:

• Naresh Chandra, ‘Illegal Migration from Bangladesh,’ Dialogue, New Delhi, Vol.3, No.3, January-March 2002, p.18; Sanjoy  Hazarika, Rites of Passage, New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2000, pp.72-74.
• Hazarika, Rites of Passage, pp.61-63.
• Jogesh Chandra Bhuyian, ‘Illegal Migration from Bangladesh and the Demographic Change in the N.E. Region’, Dialogue,3, No.3, January-March 2002, pp.72-73; Hazarika, Rites of Passage, pp.72-74.
• `Bhuyan, ‘Illegal Migration from Bangladesh,’ pp.79-80, 82; Lokesh Chandra, ‘The New Millennium,’ Dialogue, January-March 2002, p.20; Subir Ghosh, Frontier Travails,  New Delhi: Macmillan, 2001, pp.115-16; Hazarika, Rites of Passage,234-35;  Prakash Singh, ‘Management of India’s North-Eastern Border,’ Dialogue, January-March 2002, p.67.

• Hazarika, Rites of Passage, pp.131-36, 235-36. Also see, Ghosh, Frontier Travails, 133-34 and D.N. Bezboruah, ‘Illegal Migration from Bangladesh,’ Dialogue, Vol.3, No.3, January-March 2002, pp.47-48, 51-52.

• B. Sinha, ‘Pakistan: The Chief Patron Promoter of Islamic Militancy and Terrorism’, Strategic Analysis, Vol.21, No.7, October 1997, pp.1015-29. Also, D. N. Bezboruah, ‘Illegal Migration from Bangladesh,’ p.48.

• Bezboruah, `Illegal Migration from Bangladesh,’ p.47.

• K. Sinha, Report on Illegal Migration Into Assam submitted to the President of India by the Governor of Assam, 1998. Also see, Ghosh, Frontier Travails , p.107; Onkareshwar Pandey, ‘ISI and New Wave of Islamic Militancy in the North East,’ and Prakash Singh, ‘Management of India’s North-Eastern Borders,’ in Dialogue, Vol.3, No.3, January-March 2002, p.64.

• Article by former Director General, BSF, E. N. Rammohan, in The Statesman, 28 September 2002. Also see, Editorial, The Statesman, 2 December 2002; The Statesman, 28 November 2002.  Also, statement by BSF Director General Ajay Raj Sharma on 29 November 2002, The Statesman,  30 November 2002;  Nilova Roy Chaudhury, The Statesman, 2  December 2002.  Also see The Statesman, 5 January 2003.  For an elaborate analysis of terrorist outfit in Bangladesh, see Hiranmay Karlekar, Bangladesh: The Next Afghanistan? New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2005.

• The Economic Times, 13 July 2005.

• Gen. J. R. Mukherjee, `Conflict and Insurgency’, in Jayanta Kumar Ray and Rakhee Bhattacharya (eds.), Development Dynamics in North-East India, Delhi :  Anshah,  2008,  p.2008, p.214;  E.N. Rammohan, `The Northeast  Insurgencies : Causes and Solutions,’ in Jayanta Kumar Ray and Rakhee Bhattacharyya (eds.), North East India :  Administrative Reforms and Economic Development,  New Delhi : Har-Anand, 2008, pp.117-22.
• Dainik Jugasankha, Kolkata, 25 February 2018.

• Dainik Jugasankha, Kolkata, 21 March 2018.
• Article by Arijit Aditya, Dainik Jugasankha, 26 March 2018; also see, Bireswar Das, Dainik Jugasankha, 30 August 2018.
• Dainik Jugasankha, Kolkata, 27 March 2018.

• For a few, among innumerable, references to complaints by Bengali Hindus, see Dainik Jugasankha, Kolkata, 21, 22 and 27 March, and 29 August 2018.
• The Gazette of India Extraordinary, New Delhi, 8 September 2015; Press Information Bureau, Government of India, Ministry of Home Affairs, 7 September 2015.

(Published in Dialogue, July-September Issue,  2018, New Delhi, pp.79-90.)