Cause and effect: On human rights, citizenship cases  

Concerns surrounding citizenship faced by sections of society in India’s border States have come to the fore again with courts stepping in to provide temporary relief to harassed individuals. The issues arising from these cases are far from settled. On June 24, 2025, the Supreme Court of India stayed the deportation of Jaynab Bibi who was labelled a “foreigner”, first by the Foreigners’ Tribunal in Assam, and then by the Gauhati High Court. Despite hailing from a family whose members have lived in Assam for generations, and furnishing all documents, she has had to run from pillar to post to prove that she is an Indian citizen. A Bench of Justices K.V. Viswanathan and N. Kotiswar Singh ordered the Union government not to take any coercive steps against Ms. Bibi, till the next hearing in August. In the case of Rakshanda Rashid, the High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh ordered the Union Home Secretary to repatriate the 63-year-old housewife to India. She was deported to Pakistan following the crackdown against Pakistani nationals after the Pahalgam terror attack in April. Ms. Rashid, a Pakistani national, had been staying in Jammu for the past 38 years with her husband and two children, and had a long-term visa. Her application for citizenship in 1996 is yet to be processed.

In his order, High Court judge Rahul Bharti said human rights are the most sacrosanct component of a human life and that there are times when a court has to respond “SOS like” without going into the merits and demerits of a case, which can be decided on in due course of time. The lawyers for Ms. Bibi referred to Md. Rahim Ali @ Abdur Rahim vs The State Of Assam in 2024 in which the Supreme Court touched on the manner in which people in Assam were being randomly suspected as foreigners without any cogent evidence. “…[I]t is well settled that suspicion, however high it may be, can under no circumstances, be held to be a substitute for legal evidence,” it said, laying down the due process to be followed when an individual is declared a foreigner. The Citizenship (Amendment) Act of 2019, by offering citizenship to six non-Muslim communities in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh, adopted a narrow and arbitrary view of “religious persecution”. The innate violence in the rhetoric of senior Bharatiya Janata Party Chief Ministers such as Yogi Adityanath and Himanta Biswa Sarma against minorities has heightened the anxiety felt by the marginalised, poor, sometimes undocumented, communities. Governments must uphold human rights and dignity of the individual, as provided for under the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and not have to be nudged by courts.