Impact of Exclusion from the 2019 National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam on Access to Welfare Benefits, Uma Menon, UG '24 (2278996)

The 2019 National Register of Citizens (NRC) in the Indian state of Assam intended to distinguish real citizens from purported illegal immigrants by requiring all individuals to present documents proving roots in the country that preceded 1971. Initially published in 1951, the NRC was not updated until the release of a 2014 Supreme Court order aimed to settle immigration disputes, with three drafts published between 2017 and 2019. The 1.9 million individuals excluded from the NRC are to become stateless if unable to appeal successfully at Foreigners Tribunals, yet the implications of statelessness are unclear due to government opacity. Low-income communities, ethnic Bengalis, and other marginalized groups have been disproportionately excluded due to challenges in presenting documentation and accessing legal aid. To understand how NRC exclusion creates political and economic disenfranchisement, I studied its impact on the outcome variable of welfare access. Examining the 2016 Aadhaar Act and Supreme Court rulings, I find that to access welfare benefits through the Public Distribution System, individuals must enroll in Aadhaar, India’s biometric identification system. Based on content analysis of 347 articles, I find that despite no citizenship requirement for Aadhaar enrollment and NRC exclusion not constituting a final determination of statelessness, excluded individuals were unable to obtain Aadhaar because their biometric details were frozen unexpectedly after the NRC claims and objections phase. This precluded welfare access by preventing individuals from linking their ration cards to Aadhaar, suggesting a legal and governmental failure that should be addressed by future policies.

Uma Menon, UG '24: https://www.linkedin.com/in/uma-menon/ + theumamenon.com