In what critics consider part of an anti-Muslim plan, India leaves nearly 2 million people off citizens' list

Assam state national register.
(Image credit: BIJU BORO/AFP/Getty Images)

Nearly two million people in India's northeastern state of Assam were told Saturday they could soon be declared stateless after the results of a years-long exercise to check illegal immigration from neighboring Muslim-majority Bangladesh were published.

Officials reportedly checked documents submitted by around 33 million people and 31.1 million made the final list. The people excluded now have 120 days to prove their citizenship at regional quasi-judicial bodies known as foreigners' tribunals and they can subsequently appeal to higher courts if those tribunals still rule that they are illegal immigrants.

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Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.