Section 6A of Citizenship Act incentivises immigrants from Bangladesh to stay in Assam indefinitely: Justice Pardiwala’s dissent

Justice J.B. Pardiwala, the lone dissenting judge to hold Section 6A of the Citizenship Act as unconstitutional , reasoned that pacing the onus on the State to detect a foreigner allows immigrants to continue to be on the electoral rolls and enjoy being de facto citizens

Justice J.B. Pardiwala, the lone dissenting judge on the Supreme Court’s Constitution Bench, on Thursday (October 17, 2024) argued that Section 6A of the Citizenship Act, 1955, incentivises undocumented immigrants from Bangladesh to stay in Assam indefinitely until they are detected.

Justice Pardiwala specifically referred to how Section 6A(3) mandated that for migrants to register as citizens, they must first be detected as foreigners.

However, the mechanism in Section 6A did not provide for self-declaration or voluntary detection as a foreigner. The process of detection could only be set in motion by the State.

The judge concluded that this was a clear departure from the scheme of the Citizenship Act and Articles 6 and 7 of the Constitution which allows acquiring citizenship through registration.

Besides, Section 6A(3) did not prescribe an outer time limit for the detection of an immigrant to Assam as a foreigner.

Also read | Over 30,000 people detected to be foreigners by tribunals in Assam since 1966: Centre

“Thus, an immigrant whose name figures in the electoral roll, despite being a foreigner, continues to be eligible to vote in the elections till that person is detected as a foreigner and the name of that person is struck off the electoral roll. There being no temporal limit to the applicability of Section 6A, this situation would continue in the years to come till the detection exercise is completed,” Justice Pardiwala wrote.