The list, known as the National Register of Citizens (NRC), was published on Saturday after a years-long exercise aimed at identifying legal residents in the impoverished border state.
A total of 31.1 million people were included in the final list, leaving out 1.9 million people, according to a statement from the Assam government.
“The entire process of NRC update has been meticulously carried out in an objective and transparent manner. Adequate opportunity of being heard has been given to all persons at every stage of the process. The entire process is conducted as per statutory provisions and due procedure followed at every stage,” it said.
The government said the agenda was to detect and deport undocumented immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh after the exercise. However, critics claimed the exercise was an attempt to deport millions of Muslims, who make up a third of the state’s population.
It is now a wait and see for millions as their fate lies in the hands of Indian authorities planning to publish citizens list.
Resentment against immigrants has simmered over the years in Assam, with residents accusing outsiders of taking their jobs and land.
Millions of Bangladeshi refugees, both Muslim and Hindu, arrived in India following the country’s 1971 war for independence.
The mass influx of refugees into Assam has sparked violent anti-immigrant campaigns in the past.
The NRC is unique to Assam and was first prepared in 1951. Work on the latest list began in 2015 and was overseen by India’s Supreme Court. Only those who can demonstrate that they or their forebears were in India before 1971 could be included in the list.
Officials checked documents submitted by roughly 33 million people for a draft released last July. That list left out more than four million people.
On Saturday, a steady trickle of people lined up to check their names on the final citizenship list in Buraburi village outside one of the many offices that have been set up across Assam for residents to verify the status of their citizenship applications.
The current population of India is 1,368,677,213 as of Saturday, August 31, 2019, based on the latest United Nations estimates.
India population is equivalent to 17.71% of the total world population. The country is ranked number 2 in the list of countries (and dependencies) by population.
