News:Recently,five law schools of the country have jointly launched a legal aid clinic called Parichay.
Facts:
About Parichay:
- Parichay which means identity aims to help people excluded from the National Register of Citizens (NRC) by helping them to appeal before the foreigners tribunals.
- It is envisaged to function as a clearing house of litigation and research assistance for lawyers filing appeals against exclusion from the Register of Citizens(NRC).
- It consists largely of student volunteers who will assist lawyers in drafting appeals, conduct research on pertinent questions of the law and generate documentation on the functioning of Foreigners Tribunals.
Additional information:
About National Register of Citizens(NRC):
- NRC is a register which contains the name of all citizens of India residing in Assam. It was first prepared in 1951.
- It has been updated in Assam to address the issue of illegal migrants.It seeks to identify illegal migrants in Assam who had entered the state on or after 25th March 1971.
- The update has been carried out under the Citizenship Act, 1955, and according to rules framed in the Assam Accord,1985.
Updated National Register of Citizens(NRC):
- The updated NRC was published on August 31,2019.Over 19 lakh people were excluded from the final list.
- The excluded persons have 120 days to file an appeal at any of the existing Foreigners Tribunals.The Tribunals are required to dispose of the cases within six months.
- Appellants can then approach the High Court and Supreme Court. They will get a window of 10 months to prove their citizenship before being sent to detention centres.
Foreigners tribunal:
- Foreigners Tribunal (FT) was set up in Assam in 1964 through the Foreigners Tribunal Order 1964.
- The tribunals have been mandated with identifying the legal status of suspected foreigners in Assam.
- At present, there are 100 FTs in Assam; of these 64 were set up in 2015, to expedite the exercise of determining illegal immigrants in the state through the National Register of Citizens (NRC).
