Illegal migration has been the fuel of Assam’s politics for decades. When the SC upheld the 1971 cutoff for identifying illegal migrants, it said that a different set of rules for Assam is ‘rational’. What makes Assam’s case unique?
Assam was adding the equivalent of a third of its population all through the 1950s, and then again in the 1960s. So, by the time the 1971 Census came out, its population had grown more than 80% in two decades.