More than 22 collectives of women, queer and trans persons appealed to Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray not to implement the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and National Population Register (NPR) in Maharashtra.
They demanded an assurance from the Chief Minister in the ongoing Assembly session. Calling the NPR the first step to NRC, the collectives said “the NPR will have serious and grave implications for women, queer and trans persons and define newer forms of disenfranchisement.”
The members of the collective, who congregated in Mumbai on Tuesday from various parts of the country, represented groups like Adivasis, sex workers, transgender communities, slum dwellers, domestic and unorganised sector workers, Muslim and Christian women, and children living on the streets.
Sujata Gothoskar of the Forum Against Oppression of Women (FAOW), Mumbai, said women will be the most affected by the NRC. “The fact that 69% of the people lacking papers for citizenship in Assam are women is not a coincidence,” said Ms. Gothoskar. She attributed the reason to early and child marriages, which lead to a relocation of women without adequate documents, lack of education, missing birth certificates in rural areas, and no mention in property documents like homes and agricultural land.
Chayanika Shah of LABIA – A Queer Feminist LBT Collective, pointed out that the NRC and NPR will affect orphans and children of single parents, especially those with single mothers. “These children will face immense difficulty in proving their lineage because the whole NPR process is patrilineal,” said Ms. Shah.
The lack of adequate documentation will affect the transgender and queer community as well, said Poushali Basak of Sappho for Equality, Kolkata, and FAOW. She said the Rights of Transgender Persons Act, 2019, has been rejected by the transgender community, which was not consulted in the process of drafting the Act.
“The NRC and NPR add to the problem, where most trans people have mismatched documents between birth certificates and their present-day self-identified name and gender. Many queer and trans people have also left their families, who do not accept them,” said Ms. Basak.
The lack of contact with families is also widely seen among sex workers, said Kiran, a sex worker from Veshya Anyay Mukti Parishad, Sangli. “Our families will never give us the documents if we go back home to ask them, and many migrate from far-off States for work without papers,” said Ms. Kiran. She said children of sex workers seldom have their fathers’ names on their documents, making them vulnerable targets.
The collectives argued that the NRC and NPR could also lead to a breach of privacy, and “with no regulatory body in charge, can create havoc in the everyday lives of citizens, exposing them to various frauds and danger to personal safety.”
