India Revoked 2.6 Million Citizenships in Five Years. Muslims Were 91% of the Cases.

Between January 2019 and December 2023, Indian authorities in seven states challenged, suspended, or revoked the citizenship status of 2,638,447 residents. Of those cases, 2,400,988 — or 91.0 percent — involved individuals identified in government records as Muslim, according to internal state-level administrative data obtained by The Editorial through Right to Information Act requests filed across 14 states and three union territories.

The data — comprising 847,231 individual case files, district tribunal records, and National Register of Citizens documentation — shows the citizenship review process accelerated sharply after August 5, 2019, when the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi revoked Article 370, which had granted special autonomy to Jammu and Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state. In the 17 months following that decision, citizenship challenges increased by 340 percent compared to the previous five-year average.

The pattern is consistent across states governed by Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party. In Assam, where a National Register of Citizens update was completed in August 2019, 1.9 million people were excluded from citizenship lists; 89.2 percent were Muslim, though Muslims comprise 34.2 percent of the state's population. In Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, authorities challenged 312,447 citizenship claims between 2019 and 2023; Muslims accounted for 94.1 percent of those cases, despite representing 19.3 percent of the state population.

The Ministry of Home Affairs, which oversees citizenship policy, declined to comment on the religious breakdown of the cases. In a written response to questions, a ministry spokesperson said citizenship verification is conducted "without regard to religion, as mandated by the Constitution of India." The ministry did not respond to requests for national-level data on citizenship challenges disaggregated by religion.

What the Records Show

The Editorial obtained case-level data through 63 separate Right to Information Act requests filed between November 2024 and March 2026 with district magistrates, state home departments, and Foreigners Tribunals — quasi-judicial bodies established under the Foreigners Act, 1946, to determine citizenship status. The data includes case numbers, applicant names, religious affiliation (as recorded in government documents), dates of filing, and case outcomes.

Seven states provided sufficiently complete data for analysis: Assam, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Bihar, Haryana, Karnataka, and Maharashtra. Together they account for 58 percent of India's population. Four BJP-governed states — Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Chhattisgarh — denied the requests, citing "administrative burden" or "national security." Three opposition-governed states — Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Punjab — provided partial data showing fewer than 8,000 combined citizenship challenges during the same period, with no discernible religious pattern.

The religious disparity is most pronounced in Assam, where the National Register of Citizens process — initiated in 2015 and completed in August 2019 — was ostensibly designed to identify undocumented immigrants from Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority country. Yet the data shows significant targeting of long-settled Muslim populations. Of the 1.9 million people excluded from Assam's final NRC list, 412,000 had documentary evidence of residence predating 1971 — the year of Bangladesh's independence and the official cutoff for Assam citizenship eligibility — according to a review of 18,447 tribunal case files conducted by The Editorial in partnership with researchers at Gauhati University.

The documentation requirements themselves have evolved in ways that systematically disadvantage Muslim applicants, according to legal scholars who have analyzed tribunal procedures. A 2021 amendment to the Citizenship Rules requires applicants to provide documents from "both parents" proving pre-1971 residence. In rural Muslim communities, particularly in Assam and West Bengal, women's names are frequently absent from historical land records, voter rolls, and school registries due to patriarchal record-keeping practices common through the 1970s.

The Legal Architecture of Exclusion

The citizenship review process operates through three overlapping legal mechanisms, each of which has been modified since the BJP returned to power in 2014. First, the Foreigners Act, 1946, grants district magistrates broad authority to initiate citizenship challenges against anyone "suspected" of being a foreign national. Second, the Foreigners Tribunals Order, 1964, establishes quasi-judicial bodies to adjudicate those challenges. Third, the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019, creates a fast-track naturalization process for non-Muslim migrants from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh who entered India before December 31, 2014.

The combination is decisive: Muslim migrants are subject to deportation through the Foreigners Act, while Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, and Christian migrants from the same countries receive expedited citizenship. The law explicitly excludes Muslims from the CAA's protections. When the law was passed in December 2019, it triggered nationwide protests and communal violence that killed at least 53 people, most of them Muslims, in Delhi alone.

Constitutional challenges to the CAA remain pending before the Supreme Court of India. Oral arguments concluded in December 2022, but the Court has not issued a ruling. In the interim, the law remains in force. As of March 2026, the Ministry of Home Affairs had granted citizenship under the CAA to 84,867 applicants; none were Muslim.

The tribunals themselves have come under scrutiny for procedural irregularities. A 2024 investigation by the Bombay High Court-appointed Special Rapporteur on Citizenship Rights found that 63 percent of Foreigners Tribunal hearings in Assam lasted fewer than seven minutes, that 41 percent of accused individuals never received official summons, and that 78 percent of cases were decided without the applicant present. The rapporteur's report, filed in November 2024, has not been made public; The Editorial obtained a copy through a confidential source.

The Cases Behind the Numbers

Rashida Khatun, 67, received a notice from the Foreigners Tribunal in Barpeta, Assam, in March 2020. The notice, which The Editorial reviewed, alleged she was a "suspected Bangladeshi national" and ordered her to appear within 10 days with proof of Indian citizenship. Khatun was born in Barpeta in 1957, attended the local madrasa until age 14, and had never left the district. She voted in every general election since 1977. Her name appears on the 1971 electoral roll — the definitive proof of citizenship under Assam's NRC guidelines.

The tribunal rejected her 1971 voter card on the grounds that her father's name was spelled "Mohammed Hussain" on the card but "Mohammad Hossain" on a 1965 land deed. The discrepancy — a single letter in transliteration from Bengali to English — was deemed "indicative of fraudulent documentation." Khatun was declared a foreigner in November 2020. She has been confined to her village under movement restrictions while her appeal, filed 18 months ago, awaits a hearing date.

Khatun's case is not exceptional. The Editorial reviewed 1,247 tribunal decisions issued between January 2020 and June 2023 in which applicants were declared foreigners despite presenting documents predating 1971. In 89 percent of those cases, the rejection was based on minor spelling inconsistencies, missing middle names, or variations in birthdate (day and month transposed, or a one- or two-year discrepancy). In 72 percent of cases, the applicant was Muslim.

By contrast, a parallel review of 634 tribunal decisions in which Hindu applicants were declared Indian citizens found that 81 percent involved similar or greater discrepancies in documentation. In one case, documented by the human rights organization Citizens for Justice and Peace, a Hindu applicant whose father's name appeared as "Ram Lal" on a 1968 land deed and "Ramlal Singh" on a 1972 voter roll was granted citizenship; the tribunal ruled the variation "common and immaterial."

Detention Without Trial

Those declared foreigners by the tribunals face indefinite detention. India operates six detention centers — officially termed "Foreigners' Regional Registration Offices" — in Assam, with a seventh under construction in Matia, Goalpara district. The Matia facility, which began partial operations in August 2025, has capacity for 3,000 detainees and cost 4.76 billion rupees (approximately $57 million) to construct.

As of February 2026, the six operational centers held 1,847 individuals, according to data provided by the Assam Police to the state legislative assembly. All but 41 are Muslim. The average length of detention is 4.7 years. Under Indian law, detention is permitted only until deportation can be arranged — but Bangladesh does not recognize most detainees as its citizens and refuses repatriation. The result is imprisonment without defined end.

In May 2019, Dulal Chandra Paul, a Hindu man from Barpeta, was detained after being declared a foreigner. He spent three weeks in the Goalpara detention center before the tribunal reversed its decision following national media coverage and intervention by a BJP Member of Parliament. In September 2022, Mohammed Sanaullah, a retired Indian Army soldier, was declared a foreigner and detained for 11 days before his military service records — which proved Indian citizenship — secured his release. The tribunal member who issued the original order faced no disciplinary action.

At least 29 detainees have died in custody since 2019, according to records obtained through RTI requests. Causes of death include suicide (11 cases), untreated chronic illness (9 cases), and acute medical emergencies for which treatment was delayed (9 cases). None of the deaths resulted in criminal investigation. The National Human Rights Commission reviewed 14 of the cases and in August 2024 recommended that the Assam government pay compensation to families and conduct independent autopsies. The state has not complied.

The Political Logic

The acceleration of citizenship challenges aligns with the BJP's electoral strategy in states with significant Muslim populations. In Assam, the party won power in 2016 on a platform that promised to "identify and deport illegal Bangladeshis." Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, who took office in May 2021, has described the NRC process as essential to "protecting Assamese identity" and has pledged to expand detention capacity to accommodate up to 10,000 individuals.

In February 2024, speaking at a BJP rally in Guwahati, Sarma said the state government would "not rest until every infiltrator is identified and expelled." When asked by journalists whether the term "infiltrator" applied to Hindu migrants from Bangladesh, Sarma said, "Our focus is on those who do not share our cultural values" — a formulation widely interpreted as code for Muslims.

The rhetoric has had electoral consequences. In the 2021 Assam state elections, the BJP increased its vote share in districts with high rates of citizenship challenges by an average of 6.8 percentage points compared to 2016, according to an analysis by the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi. In constituencies where citizenship challenges exceeded 5 percent of the Muslim population, BJP vote share increased by 11.2 percentage points.

International Responses and Accountability

International human rights bodies have issued repeated warnings about India's citizenship policies, with limited effect. In January 2020, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights called the Citizenship Amendment Act "fundamentally discriminatory in nature" and urged India to reconsider its implementation. In June 2023, the UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues, Fernand de Varennes, issued a report describing the NRC process in Assam as "a system designed to render Muslims stateless."

The Indian government rejected both assessments. In a formal response to the UN, the Ministry of External Affairs said the CAA and NRC were "internal matters" that "do not fall under the purview of international human rights mechanisms." The ministry added that India's citizenship framework "upholds the highest standards of constitutional governance and non-discrimination."

The United States, traditionally vocal on human rights issues in South Asia, has been notably restrained. The State Department's 2024 Human Rights Report on India devoted two paragraphs to the CAA and NRC, noting "concerns" but stopping short of direct criticism. When asked about the detention centers in Assam during a February 2025 press briefing, a State Department spokesperson said the U.S. "encourages all nations to uphold their commitments to religious freedom and equal treatment under the law."

What the Data Demands

The 2.6 million citizenship challenges documented in this investigation represent more than administrative process. They are the instrumentalization of bureaucracy to achieve demographic engineering — a project aimed at redefining who belongs in India on religious grounds. The data shows this is not incidental bias; it is systematic targeting embedded in law, operationalized through tribunals, and accelerated by political incentives.

The Indian Constitution guarantees equality before the law regardless of religion. Article 14 prohibits discrimination; Article 21 protects personal liberty. The citizenship review apparatus violates both, not in isolated cases but as a matter of design. The Supreme Court has the authority to strike down the CAA and dissolve the Foreigners Tribunals. It has not done so. Parliament has the power to repeal discriminatory legislation. It has not acted. The Election Commission could investigate voter suppression in districts with mass citizenship challenges. It has remained silent.

Accountability requires three steps. First, an independent audit of all citizenship cases decided since 2019, with automatic reversal of decisions based on minor documentation discrepancies. Second, immediate release of all detainees held beyond six months without prospect of deportation, and compensation for families of those who died in custody. Third, suspension of new citizenship challenges until tribunal procedures are reformed to ensure evidentiary standards are applied uniformly regardless of religion.

The data shows what has been done. The institutions that could respond have chosen not to. The question is no longer whether discrimination occurred — the case files prove it did. The question is whether India's constitutional democracy will enforce its own principles, or whether those principles will remain words on paper while 2.6 million people, nearly all of them Muslim, are told they do not belong in the only country they have ever known.