On October 8, the Supreme Court sent a notice to the Centre and the Election Commission on a plea seeking a National Register of Citizens for Tripura. The petition was filed by the Tripura People’s Front and others who want a counting exercise like Assam’s, which is currently updating its 1951 National Register of Citizens. It is an exercise whose stated aim is to separate genuine citizens in the state from undocumented migrants – “illegal immigrants” in bureaucratic vocabulary.
The 200-page petition covers familiar ground: years of illegal “influx” from across the border with Bangladesh has apparently reduced Tripura’s tribal inhabitants to a minority, resulting in land alienation, loss of livelihood and the threat of cultural annihilation. “Illegal immigration” is as big a problem in Tripura as in Assam, the petitioners argue. The steady flow of immigrants from Bangladesh, they say, is no less than an “external aggression”, which the state is duty bound to protect its citizens from.