In 2012, a Foreigners Tribunal in Assam’s Silchar issued Anjali Roy, 60, and her brother notices for being suspected undocumented immigrants, saying they could not produce valid documents for police verification. She said her brother could not handle the humiliation and died by suicide, making Roy more determined to prove her Indian identity. Roy fought a successful legal battle for three years to prove her Indian identity in 2015. But she would get tied up in bureaucratic red tape for another nine years to get voting right back.
Roy’s name was erased from the voter list after the tribunal’s notice in 2012. She said she got the certificate of her Indian identity and pleaded with election officials to include her name on the voter list ahead of the 2016 assembly elections. “I appealed to them to include my name but they kept me waiting…before the 2018 panchayat election, 2019 general elections, and 2021 assembly elections but they kept asking me to wait,” she said.