As per the White Paper on Foreigners Issue, released by Home and Political Department, Government of Assam, during intensive revision of electoral roll in Assam in 1997, the letter ‘D’ (for doubtful/disputed) was marked against the names of those electors who could not prove their Indian citizenship status at the time of verification. Based on the verification report, the Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) took a decision on whether a reference to the concerned Tribunal was necessary to ascertain the Indian citizenship  status of  such electors.  Once, EROs confirmed in the affirmative, such cases were forwarded to the competent authority (SP of the concerned district) for reference to the concerned Tribunals. Based on the judgments/orders of the Tribunals, the letter ‘D’ was either removed if Indian Citizenship status was confirmed or name of the electors deleted from the electoral rolls if citizenship status as Indian could not be established in Court.

Issuing notice to the ‘D’ voters is a legal process and there is no question of harassing people. ‘D’ voters are not detained. Only persons declared by Foreigners Tribunals (FTs) as foreigners are kept in the detention centers. State Government updates the details about ‘D’ voters. As per the monthly report of disposal of cases in FTs of Assam, 19,612 ‘D’ voters were declared Foreigners till October, 2017.

 

This was stated by the Minister of State for  Home Affairs, Shri Kiren Rijiju in a written reply to question in the Lok Sabha today.

 

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PK/SS/JS/2407

 

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