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In India's Assam State, a Campaign against Illegal Immigrants Jeopardizes
Millions

Anjana Pasricha

   NEW DELHI - In India's northeastern Assam state, anxiety and panic is
   mounting among nearly four million people who fear they may no longer
   count as Indian citizens although many have lived in the country for
   decades.

   As part of a campaign to root out illegal immigrants, authorities will
   publish on Saturday a final list of the state's bonafide citizens.

   The hundreds of thousands whose names were excluded from a preliminary
   list last July have scrambled through a bureaucratic maze for the past
   year, trying to dig out documents from government offices or engaging
   lawyers they often cannot afford to fight for their inclusion in the
   citizens' register.

   Waiting to hear their fate, they fear being packed to detention camps
   or becoming "stateless" and stripped of benefits such as voting rights.

   "People are going around with bundles of hope, wrapped in plastic,
   waiting for hearings, lining up to get on to the register," says Sanjoy
   Hazarika, international director of the Commonwealth Human Rights
   Initiative and an Assamese scholar.

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