Political leaders and NGOs belonging to the Chakma community have sough Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s intervention for stopping the “illegal National Register of Citizens (NRC)” being conducted by the Mizoram government to identify alleged foreigners.
The exercise specifically targets the minority Chakmas, said a team that submitted a joint memorandum to the Prime Minister on Monday.
The team lead by Chakma Autonomous District Council (CADC) chief executive member Rashik Mohan Chakma included BJP’s lone legislator in Mizoram Buddha Dhan Chakma and the party’s national council member Nirupam Chakma.
They said that the Mizoram government had so far conducted the NRC, neither sanctioned by the Centre nor the Supreme Court, in at least 14 Chakma-inhabited villages in Mizoram’s Lunglei district. No such survey was conducted in any village inhabited by the Mizos, who comprise almost 90% of the State’s population.
The Lunglei district administration had on February 11 issued a notice to the presidents of the village councils asking them to participate in the “illegal NRC under the garb of verification and identification of unauthorised settlements” as well as to provide accommodation, food, translators, etc., to the survey team members.
‘Worse than Assam NRC’
Hundreds of Chakma villagers had to stand in the queue and fill the “proforma for identification of recent settlers within Mizoram and verification of their nationality and provide documents in proof of their citizenship such as voter ID, Aadhaar card, educational certificates and information on past residential addresses, etc., along with the duly filled survey form. Worst, the poor Chakma villagers had to provide food, accommodation and translators to the officials,” the Chakma leaders said in their joint memorandum.
Mizoram’s NRC form has six questions more than the one in Assam, the team pointed out.
These are: place of birth, religion, brief history and names of villages last settled with their period of stay, permanent address in the native country, physical features such as height, colour of hair and eyes and distinguishing marks, and ground or basis of inclusion in the voter list as per Form 6 by Electoral Registration Officer and Assistant Electoral Registration Officer.
Leaving out the Mizos and focussing only on the Chakmas was nothing but racial profiling on the basis of religion and ethnicity, the Chakma leaders said.
The Chakmas are Buddhist while almost all Mizos are Christians, a majority of them Presbyterian.
The Chakma leaders urged Mr. Modi to stand by his declaration at Ramlila ground in Delhi on December 22, 2019, that ever since his government had come to power in 2014 “there has been no discussion on NRC anywhere”.
The Chakma political leaders and NGOs urged the Prime Minister to immediately intervene into the matter by asking Mizoram to stop the illegal NRC, and issue a notification stating that no State government or Union Territory administration must conduct any NRC or NRC-like survey or exercise for identification of alleged foreigners.
They also urged Mr. Modi to instruct the Mizoram government not to use the data or documents obtained during the illegal NRC for any purpose and that a high-level Central team should be sent to investigate the survey targeting the Chakmas.
The NGOs that signed the memorandum included the Central Mizoram Chakma Students Union, the Chakma National Council of India, the Mizoram Buddhist Association, and the Mizoram Chakma Alliance Against Discrimination.