The Gauhati High Court has been informed that the Assam National Register of Citizens (NRC) may have 2.77 lakh "undeserving" names on the list, released on 31 August last year, excluding the names of over 19 lakh persons, reported IANS.
Assam's NRC Coordinator Hitesh Dev Sarma submitted a detailed affidavit in the court on 3 December.
In the affidavit, Sarma explained that the NRC published in August last year was only a "supplementary list" which included 4,700-odd ineligible names. The final document is yet to published by the Registrar General of India (RGI), Sarma added.
According to the affidavit, 1,02,462 names have been deleted through “incidental verification" of 27 percent of the draft NRC, which means that the rest of the NRC could have many more ineligible names.
“Considering the fact that 1,02,462 names were deleted through ‘incidental verification’ of 27 percent of the draft NRC, one definitely cannot ignore the remaining 73 percent unverified results where there may be 2.77 lakh undeserving names in the NRC going by the same arithmetic.”Affidavit submitted by Hitesh Dev Sarma
The NRC, published in August 2019 under the direct supervision of the Supreme Court, excluded 19 lakh people. It included around 5.56 lakh Hindus and over 11 lakh Muslims from around 3.3 crore applicants, reported The Indian Express.
Former NRC state coordinator Prateek Hajela had then called it the “final NRC”.
However, the Assam government had then called Hajela’s list erroneous and blamed him for making a flawed NRC list. Since then, NRC authorities have yet to issue rejection orders to the 19 lakh excluded persons, reported the daily.
Sarma’s affidavit states that 1,032 persons belonging to the Declared Foreigner (DF), Doubtful Voter (DV) and person having cases pending at Foreigners Tribunal (PFT) categories and their descendants have been wrongly included in the NRC.
It also said that absence of quality check in the original inhabitant marking and verification, lack of quality check in family tree cross-checking and matching are the main reasons behind such "wrongful inclusions".
“Rather instructions have been received for issue of rejection slips and winding up of the operation of updation of NRC. The Registrar General of India is also silent on final publication of the NRC for which it is the only authority to take action and till date the Final NRC is yet to be published by Registrar General of India as per Clause 7 of the rules under the Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules 2003,” Sarma mentioned in the affidavit, reported The Indian Express.
The affidavit further stated that nearly 4,800 ineligible persons were included in the updated NRC for Assam.
Assam's Parliamentary Affairs Chandra Mohan Patowary recently informed the Assembly that the state government had submitted an affidavit in the Supreme Court, requesting for re-verification of 20 percent of the names in districts bordering Bangladesh and 10 percent in the remaining areas of the state. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had claimed that the Assam NRC is "faulty" and had rejected it, reported IANS.
(With inputs from IANS and Indian Express)
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