The Supreme Court of India, which re-opened after the Christmas-New Year break on Monday, ruled that children whose parents have obtained citizenship under the National Register of Citizens, but themselves had remained illegal aliens, should not be sent to detention camps.
There were 60 children who were excluded from Assam’s National Register of Citizens (NRC), despite providing all documents and their parents’ name in the final list.
The ruling came on an application filed in court regarding 60 children who were excluded from the final NRC list while their parents' names were in the NRC. They had expressed apprehension that these children would be sent to detention camps as a result of the discrepancy.
In the same case, the nation's highest court has asked the new state coordinator of NRC to explain certain allegedly anti-immigration posts made on social media or remove them. The petition was filed on behalf of a voluntary organisation in Assam, who have alleged the new state coordinator had made several posts on social media targeting Bengali Muslims and Rohingyas, prior to his recent appointment.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi denied in December 2019 that there were any detention centres at all in India.
"The Congress party is spreading rumours that people will be sent to detention centres. Neither is anybody sending the country's Muslims to detention centres nor are there any detention centres in India," he said.
The Assam NRC was the result of an agreement signed between the Government of India and the leaders of the Assam Movement in 1985, who had demanded the identification and deportation of all foreign nationals – predominantly illegal Bangladeshi immigrants.
The Supreme Court-monitored preparation of the final list of the NRC was completed and released on August 31, 2019, in which more than 1.9 million people were found to be “illegal immigrants” as they could not prove they were genuine citizens of India.