New Delhi: Since 1985, the foreigners’ tribunals (FTs) functioning in the state have declared 1,17,164 persons as non-Indian.This official figure, revealed in parliament by minister of state for home G. Kishan Reddy on July 16, includes the outcome of tribunals set up under the Illegal Migrants (Determination) Tribunals Act, 1983, and also under the Foreigners Act, 1946 following the scrapping of the former Act by the Supreme Court in 2005.In a written reply to an unstarred question by Congress MP from Assam, Abdul Khaleque, the MoS provided two annexures sharing details on the number of FTs functioning in various districts and the number of people declared foreigners by these quasi-judicial bodies in each district.Assam has 33 districts. Presently, 100 FTs are functioning in 28 districts.Most foreigners identified in NagaonThe minister’s figures on the number of declared foreigners in each district over the past 34 years show that the Nagaon district has the highest number of non-citizens identifued by the tribunals. This Muslim majority district in the state’s Brahmaputra Valley has 20,261 declared foreigners.This is followed by another district which became Muslim majority in the 2011 Census: Morigaon. There are five FTs presently operating in the district. Between 1985 and March 2019, the tribunals have declared 15,633 persons as foreigners in this district, which is located close to Nagaon.Six of the state’s nine Muslim majority districts feature in the ten districts where most people have been declared foreigners by tribunals thus far. These districts are Barpeta (4,649 declared foreigners), Dhubri (4,215 persons), Darrang (4,436 persons) and Goalpara (4,203 persons), apart from Nagaon and Morigaon.Among the three other Muslim majority districts of the state, Hailkhandi has only 62 foreigners declared since 1985. Bongaigaon, which became a Muslim dominated district in 2011, has 1,621 declared foreigners, while the Karimganj district in Barak Valley, which was a part of the erstwhile Sylhet division that went to East Pakistan, has 2,920 foreigners declared by the FTs.But what is also to be underlined here is that the Hindu majority districts like Jorhat, Dibrugarh, Hojai and Cachar also figure in the top ten list. While Jorhat stands in the third position with 9,430 persons declared foreigners since 1985, Cachar follows with 8,151 persons, Dibrugarh with 7,213 persons and Hojai with 5,498 persons. These districts also have high concentration of Bengali Hindus, many of whom are also estimated to be among the 40 lakh persons left out of the final draft of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) published in July 2018.Since the annexures didn’t provide the community/religion status of those declared foreigners by the FTs, it would be incorrect to interpret, for example, that all or most of the declared foreigners in Muslim majority districts would also be Muslims. The same applies for Hindu majority districts.This was also true of the 40 lakh people left out of the final draft of the NRC. However, Assamese news channel Pratidin Time in early August 2018 crunched the numbers of those excluded in each district. A report in The Wire, sourced from the channel’s data, showed that only five of the nine Muslim dominated districts featured among the top 16 districts with the most rejections. The 11 other districts were Hindu majority.The top 16 districts from the data provided by Kishan Reddy to parliament also shows that just six Muslim districts feature in it, while the rest are Hindu majority.People wait to have their names checked on the Assam NRC final draft. Credit: ReutersAssam, Centre’s plea to SCOn July 16, the Central and Assam governments appealed to the Supreme Court to push the deadline of the NRC beyond July 31. They also urged the apex court to agree to a 20% sample re-verification of the excluded people in the districts bordering Bangladesh and 10% in the other districts.Assam shares a 267.5 km border with Bangladesh, and two Muslim majority districts feature on that boundary: Dhubri and Karimganj. The Hindu majority Cachar also falls on the same boundary. The South Salmara district, carved out of Dhubri in 2016, is also on the border and is Muslim majority. If the SC agrees to the Centre’s proposal, it would essentially mean doing a 20% sample re-verification in most Muslim majority districts.Following is the district-wise chart of 1,17,164 persons declared non-Indian by the FTs since 1985.