An activist in Silchar of southern Assam has asked the authorities to find ways to include hundreds of sex workers who could not apply for inclusion in the updated National Register of Citizens (NRC) because they were being shunned by their families.
Some of the sex workers in Silchar town — trafficked as children — do not know where they came from, while others had second thoughts about identifying their families through the family tree necessary for inclusion in the NRC, activist Tuhina Sarma said.
Silchar arguably has the largest redlight area in the northeast, comprising three localities. This area is believed to have come up during the Second World War when Allied soldiers fighting the Japanese halted there on the way to Myanmar via Mizoram and Manipur.
“There are hundreds of sex workers, and many have children. We cannot let them become stateless because of the profession most of them were forced into and the stigma that prevented them from using the legacy data of members of their families,” Ms. Sarma, also an advocate providing free legal service to the sex workers, told The Hindu .
It is estimated that at least 1,500 sex workers are among some 3.6 lakh people who did not or could not apply for the final NRC that was published on August 31.
Assam Home Department officials said the NRC authority was yet to specify any plan about those who did not apply for the NRC.
“The government has framed the rules for the NRC exercise, drawn up the standard operating procedure, set up the tribunals and everything else related to citizenship. So, it is the responsibility of the government to show the way forward for the sex workers, whose citizenship status is in a limbo for no fault of theirs,” Ms. Sarma said.
