‘Assam was never a part of Myanmar’, Solicitor General to SC during Citizenship

New Delhi: The Centre on Tuesday maintained before the Supreme Court that Assam was never a part of Myanmar.

Countering a claim made by senior advocate Kapil Sibal, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, said the senior counsel made an incorrect reference to Assam being part of Myanmar.

"He had read a wrong book of history," he said, referring to Sibal's remarks made last week.

Mehta was making a submission before a five-judge bench led by Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud.

The court was hearing 17 petitions challenging the constitutional validity of section 6A of the Citizenship Act relating to illegal immigrants in Assam. Section 6A in the Citizenship Act was inserted as a special provision to deal with the citizenship of people covered by the Assam Accord.

Mehta, representing the Centre, said before the bench, which also comprised of Justices Surya Kant, M M Sundresh, J B Pardiwala, and Manoj Misra, said, “I don’t think that may have purpose for deciding the validity of Section 6A. But some history was referred to by my learned senior friend (senior advocate Kapil Sibal). It seems he had read a wrong book of history. Assam was never a part of Myanmar”.

Mehta stressed, “This has some relevance when we deal with some other matter at some other level, and in some other composition. It was never a part, because Myanmar now has maximum immigration and therefore to say it (Assam) was always a part of (not correct).”

Defending his submissions, Sibal said, “Today what is Assam…. the British took it over. That is what I said. It is in the chapter (of history book) and quite frankly the website of Assam government also says the same thing".

Mehta said, "I don’t want to join issues on that and it was a wrong book my friend read".

Sibal said Assam government’s own website says exactly that.

However, he said, “Let us not get into it”.

"I will leave it at that and don’t want to embarrass Mr Sibal," Mehta said. 

“The issue of influx from Myanmar is pending separately before your lordships and there are other issues also pending. Therefore, this is confined to the validity of Section 6A,” he said.

The bench, however, said, "let us confine ourselves to the validity of Section 6A and moved on with the proceedings". 

Last week, Sibal, commencing his arguments on behalf of the respondents, reportedly had submitted that migration of people in the population is embedded in history and cannot be mapped.

He contended that Assam was a part of Myanmar and then the British conquered a part of it and that is how Assam was handed over to the British.

"You can now imagine the amount of movement of people that took place and under the partition, East Bengal and Assam became one," Sibal said, adding that the interaction and absorption of the Bengali population in Assam has a historical context.

Further citing his own example, Sibal said, "We were also displaced from Lahore and my maternal grandparents were killed. We also came here and when partition took place, people from Bengali ethnicity etc obviously tried to come”.

He contended that petitioner’s contention saying that this disrupted the cultural ambience of Assam is constitutionally unavailable. "I have the complete fundamental right to move from one part of the country to another," he said.