India defends citizenship register in Assam even after UN criticism

In a statement released late Sunday, Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Raveesh Kumar defended the process, saying the almost two million people excluded from the National Register of Citizens (NRC) list would not become "stateless."

The NRC "does not make the excluded person 'stateless'" and any decisions taken would be consistent with Indian laws and its "democratic traditions," he added.

"It (the NRC) also does not make him or her 'foreigner,' within the legal meaning of the term," Kumar said.

"For those who are not in the final list, (they) will not be detained and will continue to enjoy all the rights as before till they have exhausted all the remedies available under the law."

Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, recently called on New Delhi to avoid stripping people of their nationality, saying it "would be an enormous blow to global efforts to eradicate statelessness."

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) runs Assam. Modi is now under fire by critics who say the NRC process reflects the party's goal to serve only its coreligionists.

Political opponents say the NRC is being used by the BJP to marginalize the large minority of Muslims in Assam, many of whom fled there when East Pakistan broke violently from Islamabad in 1971 to become Bangladesh.

Assam is largely surrounded by Bangladesh and has long seen influxes of migrants even during Britain's colonial rule over the subcontinent. But under the NRC, only those who can demonstrate they or their ancestors were in India before 1971 can be included in the list. Those left off have 120 days to appeal at so-called Foreigners Tribunals, and can also appeal their case through the courts.

There has been growing outrage among local BJP leaders, who claim many Bengali-speaking Hindus have also been left off the list.

It is not yet clear what will happen to people who have exhausted their legal avenues.

In theory, they can be placed in one of six detention centers with a view to possible deportation to Bangladesh.

Dhaka has said previously the NRC is an "internal matter" for India and none of its citizens had moved across the border since 1971.

The Modi administration has also revoked Jammu and Kashmir’s special status, stripping the Muslim-majority region of some of the autonomy it previously had.

New Delhi’s controversial move not only infuriated Pakistan, which controls parts of Kashmir, but also sparked great anger among the local population.