The Supreme Court on Thursday declared Section 6A of the Citizenship Act, 1955—granting citizenship to immigrants who entered Assam before January 1, 1966—as constitutional.

Delivering the judgement, the court said, “We have upheld the power of the Parliament to legislate on the issue. Section 6A does not contradict Section 9 of the Citizenship Act.”

“Granting citizenship is traceable to Entry 71 of List 1 (Union List). The Assam Accord was a political solution to the issue of growing migration. Section 6A was the legislative solution,” the court said.

The court was hearing a petition challenging the constitutional validity of Section 6A of the Citizenship Act.

The court stated that the mere presence of different ethnic groups in a state does not mean infringement of Article 29(1). “Petitioners have to prove that one ethnic group is not able to protect their own language and culture just because of the presence of another ethnic group,” the court observed.

Justice Surya Kant noted, “We cannot allow one to choose their neighbours and it runs against the principle of fraternity. The principle is live and let live.”

The court further observed that the central government could have extended the application of the Act to other areas but it was not done because it was unique to the magnitude of Assam.

This section was inserted into the statute following the signing of the Assam Accord between the Union government, the All Assam Students Union (AASU), and the All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad (AAGSP) in 1985.

Under the provision, foreigners who had entered Assam before January 1, 1966 and were ‘ordinarily residents’ of the state would have all the rights of a citizen. Further, those who had entered between January 1, 1966, and March 25, 1971, would have the same rights except the right to vote for 10 years.

The petition, filed in 2012 by NGO Assam Public Works, the Assam Sanmilita Mahasangha, and others, argued that the cut-off date for citizenship is ‘discriminatory, arbitrary, and illegal’. It was said that the provision would affect the rights of the Assamese people to preserve their culture under Article 29 of the Constitution.

The court, however, observed that the cut-off date of March 25, 1971, was correct. “Migration from East Pakistan into Assam was greater than the total migration to India post-independence. It satisfies the condition of a rational yardstick. Section 6A is neither under-inclusive nor over-inclusive,” the court said.

The petitioners had questioned why, among all the border states, only Assam was singled out to implement Section 6A. They attributed the rise in infiltration and the ‘perceptible’ change in demographic patterns to the consequences of Section 6A.

The court, however, concluded that the “magnitude of influx into Assam and its effect on culture is higher in Assam... the impact of 40 lakh migrants in Assam is greater than 57 lakh in West Bengal because of the land area which is lesser in Assam compared to West Bengal.”

The Centre had relied on Article 11 of the Constitution, which grants the Parliament the power to “make any provision with respect to the acquisition and termination of citizenship and all other matters related to citizenship.”

The central government, during the hearing, had informed the court about the measures being taken to curb illegal immigration in the country, such as fencing. The Home Ministry filed an affidavit, stating that “14,346 foreign nationals were deported from the country between 2017 and 2022, and 17,861 migrants who had entered Assam between January 1966 and March 1971 were given Indian citizenship.”

Organisations such as NGO Citizens for Justice and Peace also argued in court that if Section 6A is struck down, a large number of residents, enjoying citizenship rights for over 50 years, would be rendered “stateless” and that it could further lead to ‘cultural nationalism’ from ‘civic nationalism’, which is against constitutional values.