Central Idea

A Constitution Bench has decided to commence hearings regarding a series of petitions that challenge the constitutionality of Section 6A of the Citizenship Act, of 1955.

Background of Section 6A

Section 6A was introduced as a special provision in the 1955 Act following the signing of the ‘Assam Accord‘ Memorandum of Settlement on August 15, 1985.
This accord, facilitated by the Rajiv Gandhi government, aimed to protect the cultural, linguistic, and social identity of Assam.
It marked the end of a six-year-long agitation led by the All Assam Students Union against illegal immigrants, primarily from Bangladesh.

Centre’s Defense: The Union government has maintained that Section 6A is legally sound and urged the court to dismiss the petitions. These petitions were filed nearly 40 years after the enactment of Section 6A.
Provisions of Section 6A: Under Section 6A, foreigners who entered Assam before January 1, 1966, and were “ordinarily resident” in the State, were granted all the rights and obligations of Indian citizens. Those who arrived in the State between January 1, 1966, and March 25, 1971, were accorded similar rights and obligations but could not vote for a period of 10 years.
Challenging Discrimination: Petitioners, including Assam Public Works and others, argue that Section 6A’s “discriminatory” nature in granting citizenship to immigrants, especially illegal ones, is in violation of Article 6 of the Constitution, which establishes the cutoff date for granting citizenship to immigrants as July 19, 1948.

Conservation of Cultural Rights: The Assam Sanmilita Mahasangha, a Guwahati-based civil society organization, has demanded the updating of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) for Assam based on the 1951 NRC rather than the electoral rolls of March 1971.
Supreme Court’s Involvement: In December 2014, the Supreme Court formulated 13 questions encompassing various issues related to the constitutionality of Section 6A, including its impact on the political rights of Assam’s citizens and whether it violated the rights of the Assamese people to preserve their cultural identity. In 2015, a three-judge Bench referred the case to a Constitution Bench.

The Section 6A case has been pending for several years, coinciding with the Supreme Court’s monitoring of the final Assam NRC list in August 2019, which excluded over 19 lakh individuals.
Additionally, the past years witnessed the enactment of the contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Act, which granted accelerated citizenship to immigrants from minority communities in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.

The upcoming hearings on Section 6A will provide a crucial legal examination of its constitutionality and its implications for the protection of cultural rights and the status of immigrants in Assam.