Country and We: We are residents of this country or a state?

Ved Prakash Bhardwaj

For admission to the Non-Collegiate Woman Education Board (NCWB) in Delhi University (DU), the girl students must have a residential address in Delhi. Aadhar card, passport, etc. are valid as this residential certificate. This means that only those girls who are natives of Delhi or who have proof of staying here will be able to take admission in NCWB. This is not the first time that an attempt has been made in Delhi to stop people from outside Delhi.

Recently Delhi government had announced that only Delhi residents will be treated in government hospitals. However, the Lt. Governor later invalidated this decision. A few years ago, the Kejriwal government had taken a similar decision regarding hospitals that had to be withdrawn. This is not just a matter of Delhi. Certificates of residents of the state are sought for examinations and jobs in various states. Surprisingly, to date, no certificate of being a resident of India is sought. The public has to prove every time that he is a resident of the respective state and he also has a certificate for it.

Although it seems to look a simple thing it is a very serious matter. We say that we are citizens of India because we live in India, and we are born here. Even after this, we have to face such situations. Even today, instead of a constitutional country, we are divided into princely states. Whenever there were foreign invasions on India, every time we lost and looted because there were different countries and their rulers who never got together. Just like they used to talk about their country, today the state is only talked about in matters like education and employment. The question is whether we are resident in one country or it is only a constitutional system. If the rule of being a resident of the state is so important then why is it not applicable to the leaders? Narendra Modi was the Chief Minister of Gujarat. Everyone knows that he is from Gujarat but he can contest from Varanasi. He can be a resident of two places and contest from two places. Arvind Kejriwal lives in Kaushambi in Uttar Pradesh and contests in Delhi and becomes the Chief Minister. Nobody raises any objection on a leader who contests the Lok Sabha elections from other states or reaches Rajya Sabha from there. Certainly in the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections, the candidates have to provide the local residential address. They also give the local address, but no one asks how suddenly you became a resident of this area? A person once represents the Lok Sabha or Vidhan Sabha from one region and next time he goes to contest in another region. Similarly, people in the IAS and other such services are elected from cadres of other states. That is, those who rule the country, leaders, and high administrative officials, both of them are free from the rule of being local citizens. The question is what kind of country have we created in which we have to carry different identities in different cases? In which we are denied some civil rights in one state because we live in another state. Are we citizens of one country or different states?