Dr.S.Q.R. Ilyas, spokesperson of All India Muslim Personal Law Board, cautioned that ongoing citizenship-related drives threaten to disenfranchise Muslim voters. Addressing a lecture on “Indian Constitution and the Issue of Citizenship” at JIH headquarters, he said repeated revisions of voter and population registers such as the SIR, NPR, and NRC were being used to selectively target communities.
Tracing the issue to Assam’s early NRC debates in 1950s, Ilyas noted that the exercise was originally about migration and land but later took on a communal tone. He pointed out that of the 1.9 million people whose citizenship was questioned in Assam, around 1.3 million were non-Muslims and 600,000 Muslims. Despite the figures, he said the process left Muslims feeling especially vulnerable because of political messaging and administrative bias.
He described the CAA of 2019 as discriminatory for excluding Muslims from its fast-track citizenship provisions. Linking the CAA with NRC and NPR, he warned that these together create a structure where many could lose citizenship and only select groups could regain it, effectively rendering others stateless.
Citing the SIR in Bihar, Ilyas alleged that the exercise removed millions from electoral rolls through poor verification and procedural lapses. According to him, about 6.5 million names were marked during the revision, with Muslim and marginalised voters disproportionately affected.
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