Citizenship plea dismissed after Gauhati HC finds forged pleadings and a tampered affidavit filed to mislead the court; order sent to Bar Council

The petitioner challenged a Foreigners Tribunal opinion dated 10 October 2018 declaring him a foreigner who had entered India after 25 March 1971.

Before the Tribunal, he relied principally on voter lists spanning 1965 to 2017 to establish his lineage and citizenship.

On examining the Tribunal record against the copies filed with the writ petition, the High Court found material discrepancies in the written statement and evidence-on-affidavit, including a different stated place of birth and differences in the documents referred to.

The Tribunal had rejected the petitioner’s evidence, finding discrepancies in names and relationships across the voter lists, and had also rejected other documents, including a Gaonburah certificate and an Aadhaar card.

Whether the Tribunal’s finding that the petitioner failed to establish Indian citizenship, and its consequent opinion declaring him a foreigner, was legally or factually unsustainable.

Whether the discrepancies between the documents filed in the writ petition and those in the Tribunal record, including the alleged alteration of the affidavit, affected the petitioner’s challenge.

Under Section 9 of the Foreigners Act, 1946, the burden of proving that a person is not a foreigner rests on that person; Section 2(a) defines a foreigner.

The Court relied on Basiron Nessa v. Union of India, 2018 (4) GLT 692, for the principle that documentary evidence must be proved from records and not solely by oral testimony where citizenship is in question.

It also applied Basiron Bibi v. Union of India, 2018 (1) GLT 372, that a party relying on a voter list must have the document considered as a whole, including entries adverse to that party.

The Court noted Sirajul Hoque v. State of Assam, (2019) 5 SCC 534, which held that a discrepancy in a grandfather’s name alone does not justify declaring a person a foreigner where the identities of the family members, including the person concerned, are established.

It further treated an unauthorised alteration of a sworn affidavit as discrediting its evidentiary validity.

The Court found that the petitioner had not adequately pleaded or established his relationship to the various voters appearing in the exhibited lists, while the records contained inconsistencies in names, ages, and family relationships.

It held that the petitioner could not rely only on favourable entries while disregarding adverse entries in the same voter lists.

The Court distinguished the principle in Sirajul Hoque because, in its assessment, the relevant family identities and relationships had not been established here.

It also found that the writ-petition copies materially differed from the Tribunal record and that the Tribunal-record affidavit showed signs of erasure and overwriting; it considered the filed copies ex facie unreliable and the alleged alteration serious.

On the evidence as a whole, the Court found no basis to disturb the Tribunal’s assessment.

The writ petition was dismissed; the interim bail order was recalled and revoked, and the consequences of the Tribunal’s opinion were to follow.

The Registry was directed to return the Tribunal record, preserve copies of the disputed documents, and send a copy of the judgment and the vakalatnama to the Bar Council.