Gauhati HC: a lifetime of voter lists wasn't enough to prove citizenship before a Foreigners Tribunal

The Gauhati High Court upheld a Foreigners Tribunal's finding that a man from Nagaon district, Assam, is a foreigner who entered India after 25 March 1971, the cut-off date under the special citizenship regime for Assam, after his decades of voter-list evidence failed to convincingly connect him to a father whose own presence in India before that date was never properly proved. Under Section 9 of the Foreigners Act, 1946, the burden of proving citizenship rests entirely on the person referred to a Tribunal, and never shifts to the State.

The man had produced certified voter lists from 1965, 1970, 1977 and 1994, a village headman's certificate, and an affidavit correcting his father's name, but the Tribunal and, on review, a Division Bench of Justices Sanjay Kumar Medhi and Pranjal Das, found the documentary chain broken: an uncertified 1985 voter list was never formally proved, the same list omitted his father's name without explanation, and his own affidavit correcting a dead man's name was, the Court held, self-serving and not proof in the eyes of law. Citing the Supreme Court's ruling in Sarbananda Sonowal v. Union of India, the Court held that a writ court exercising certiorari jurisdiction does not reweigh a tribunal's findings of fact, and dismissed the petition, upholding the foreigner declaration.