In a 4:1 majority ruling, a five-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud on Thursday (October 17, 2024) upheld the constitutional validity of Section 6A of the Citizenship Act, 1955 (1955 Act) that grants citizenship to immigrants who entered Assam between January 1, 1966, and March 25, 1971.
While Justice Surya Kant authored the lead majority verdict on behalf of himself, Justice M.M. Sundresh and Justice Manoj Misra, the Chief Justice penned a concurring opinion. However, Justice J.B. Pardiwala rendered a dissenting opinion declaring the statutory provision to be unconstitutional but with a prospective effect.
Section 6A is a special provision which was inserted into the 1955 Act in furtherance of a Memorandum of Settlement called the “Assam Accord” signed on August 15, 1985, by the then Rajiv Gandhi government at the Centre and the All Assam Students’ Union following a six-year-long agitation against the entry of migrants from Bangladesh into Assam.
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Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud reasoned that the statutory provision “balances the humanitarian needs of migrants of Indian Origin and the impact of such migration on economic and cultural needs of Indian States.”
Justice Kant, in his opinion, underscored that Section 6A embodies the principle of fraternity. He further observed that accepting the contentions of the petitioners would open the floodgates for similar challenges by residents of other States who might seek to attack inter-state migration under the guise of protecting their indigenous culture. However, he acknowledged that at this stage of the proceedings, the court is not equipped to embark on a microscopic fact-finding exercise to determine whether there has been any cultural erosion as claimed by the petitioners.
On the other hand, Justice Pardiwala in his dissent pointed out that even if Section 6A may have been constitutionally valid at the time of its enactment, it has acquired unconstitutionality by the efflux of time because the provision has not been effective enough to redress the problem for which it was adopted. He noted that Section 6A by not setting any temporal limit to its applicability promotes further immigration of illegal migrants into Assam and is thus liable to be struck down.
The verdict will have significant bearing on Assam’s contentious National Register of Citizens [NRC] exercise.
Reporting: Aaratrika Bhaumik
Production: V Nivedita
Published - October 17, 2024 11:07 pm IST
