NRC Bill

Assam has always been a border state and hence has always faced problems of illegal immigration. There was a National Register of Citizens in 1951 based on the year’s census but it was not maintained later. 

To aid these problems The Illegal Migrants(Determination by Tribunal) Act, 1983 was launched. This act is said to have a separate tribunal for finding out the illegal migrants in Assam. It was later stopped after the modification of the NRC.

Even after a decade of updating The National Register of Citizens there was no progress so the supreme court monitored it which helped in the final updated NRC of Assam. This was published on 31st  August , 2019. The results showed that 3.1 crore people out of 3.3 crore were citizens and 19 lakh people were stateless. However, confusion was at its peak because possibilities of legitimate citizens being excluded were floating around. 

BJP, Home-minister , Amit Shah declared in a Rajya Sabha meeting of 19th November, 2019, that NRC was going to be applied in every place of the country. 

2003 Amendment

2003 Amendment of citizenship rules saw the following rules :-

• Central government had the power to order the preparation of the National Population Register (NPR) . 
• Local officials had the power to decide if a person’s name would be added to the NRC. 
• This was all done to establish citizenship status. 
• It also stated that to imply NRC no new laws were required to be established. 

National Population Register (NPR) 

It is the list of the people who reside in India , this would include both citizens as well as non-citizens. Whereas it was also said to be the step for verifying the status of citizenship of the residents in India . 

It was in 2010 that for the first time NPR was created with 119 crore Indian residents. After the introduction of the Aadhaar card database the NPR was updated in 2015.However it is believed that after the identification the citizens who would be in doubt will be required to provide proof of their citizenship.

Citizenship Act, 1955.

It is also known as the Indian National law. The Citizenship Act 1955 clarifies the conditions for a person to have Indian nationality. 

• The people who took birth from 26th January 1950 to 1st July 1987 would get Indian citizenship automatically without taking their parents nationality into consideration. 
• The people born from 1st July 1987 till 3rd December 2004 will be given citizenship if one of their parents is Indian. 
• Whereas, people born after this period would be called an Indian citizen if both the parents are Indians or one of them is Indian and the other is considered to be an illegal immigrant. 

Protests 

After the re-launching  of the NRC there were protests all around India. These protests were for CAA and NRC bills passed by the government. These had become laws on December 12 ,2019.The main concern of the people in the protest is that these National Register of Citizens can be used to target any particular community, which should not happen at all. 

Activists and people who were protesting as an act on the streets had various methods of protesting such as carrying placards with writing on it criticising the rule. 

Conclusion 

NRC would have been a successful try if it would have executed in a better way. The public should have been made aware of the actual aims of launching the NRC . However , it cannot be denied that illegal trespassers and immigrants are increasing day by day and the citizens of India will have to suffer. Moreover, NRC could have been a great method to know about the actual number of Indian people in the country.