Justice Sudip Ranjan Sen of the Meghalaya High Court has said that his December 10 order seeking unconditional citizenship for non-Muslim migrants from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan was misinterpreted.
While NGOs in Meghalaya resented his order, the CPI(M) urged Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi to remove Justice Sen from judicial services alleging that his order was against the basic structure of the Constitution.
Justice Sen said he was not a religious fanatic and that he respects all religions “because to me God is one”. He denied speaking up against secularism and insisted the country should not be divided further on the basis of religion, caste, creed, community or language. “I would also like to clarify here that in my judgment nowhere I have said anything against secularism and my judgment makes references to the history and one cannot change the history. I would like to make it clear that when I mentioned the government under Shri. Narendra Modi ji , it is inclusive of the Hon’ble Ministers and Hon’ble Members of both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. I also mentioned about the Chief Minister of West Bengal, which did not mean that other Chief Ministers of other States were not included. My request was to the policy makers and law makers of this country. I hope this will clear the confusion, if any, in the minds of the people,” he said in a clarification on Friday.
In the judgment, Justice Sen had observed that Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis, Christians, Khasis, Jaintias and Garos from neighbouring countries in India should be declared Indian citizens and those who would come in the future should also be considered so. As India was divided on the basis of religion, it should have been declared as a Hindu country but it remained secular.
His observation was apparently in the context of National Register of Citizens (NRC) being updated in Assam. The complete NRC draft was published on July 30 and its ongoing claims and objections round expires on December 31.
“It is well-known to everyone that India still lives in its villages, and most of the people in this country are yet to receive formal education and are not aware of the importance of certain documents or have not collected them or have no records of birth certificates/ hospital records/domicile. That is why many people of Indian origin may not have any of those documents especially due to the continuous diaspora. Their presence in India is primarily due to the religious persecution that they have been facing through generations and nobody can deny that. Since then, these unfortunate people have lost many of their near and dear ones as well as their property and livelihood and were forced to come to India and till date these people are continuously facing religious persecution,” Justice Sen clarified.
He, however, said that the burden of influx of the immigrants should be shared by all states and that those who were not settled and finding difficulty to settle in a particular state or region, should be distributed to all states.
“This is only my suggestion and as per the Constitution of India, every citizen of this country has a right to settle in any part of the country and it totally depends upon the policy and law makers of the country… I do not belong to any political party nor have I got any dream to get any political berth after my retirement and neither is my judgment politically-motivated or influenced by any party. Whatever is the truth, history and real ground reality, on that basis I have written my judgment to save the citizens of India irrespective of caste, creed, religion or language and people should understand the history of India and live in peace and harmony,” Justice Sen said.
