Land revenue paying receipt, permanent account number (PAN) card and bank documents do not prove the citizenship of a person, the Gauhati High Court has observed.

A Division Bench of Justices Manojit Bhuyan and Parthivjyoti Saikia made this observation on February 12 while dismissing a writ petition filed by one Jabeda Begum against the order passed by a Foreigners’ Tribunal (FT) at Tamulpur in western Assam’s Baksa district.

Declared foreigner

The FT had declared her a foreigner who had entered Assam after 1971, the cut-off year for detection and deportation of illegal immigrants according to the Assam Accord of August 1985.

Ms. Begum had told the FT that the names of her grandparents and parents had appeared in the voters’ list of 1966 while that of her father was in the 1970 list of electors. The High Court agreed with the findings of the tribunal that she could not produce any document that could establish her link with her parents.

2016 case

The court also referred to a 2016 case of one Md. Babul Islam to reject Ms. Begum’s reliance on certain papers. “This court ... has already held that PAN card and bank documents are not proof of citizenship,” the judgement read.

Observing that land revenue paying receipts and certificates issued by a village headman “can never be the proof of citizenship of a person,” the court said the FT was correct in its decision on Ms. Begum and dismissed her petition “devoid of merit.”

The court of Justices Bhuyan and Saikia had in an earlier case observed that “merely producing an elector photo identity card in the absence of supporting evidence would not be a proof of citizenship.”