SC extends deadline for NRC claims again
FRESH BREATHER Top court allows people to submit documents such as birth, education certificates regardless of their date of issuance
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday extended till December 31 the deadline for filing of claims by people left out of Assam’s draft National Register of Citizens (NRC), and allowed them to submit legally valid documents like birth certificates, land documents, board or university certificates, regardless of their date of issuance.
The court clarified that such acceptance of documents “would be on adequate and full satisfaction of the concerned NRC authority who will be free to act on the basis of such satisfaction”.
The order comes on a request by the Assam government for an extension of the December 15 deadline to submit applications. This is the second time the deadline is being extended; it was earlier extended from November 26 to December 15.
A bench of Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi and Justice RF Nariman was apprised by NRC convener Prateek Hajela that 1.48 million claims had so far been received for inclusion in the NRC. But he added, “Filing of claims has drastically increased in the last few days.”
THE ORDER COMES ON A REQUEST BY THE ASSAM GOVERNMENT FOR AN EXTENSION OF THE
DEC 15 DEADLINE TO SUBMIT APPLICATIONS
The final draft NRC list was published on July 30 in which names of 28.9 million of the 32.9 million people were included. The names of 40,70,707 people did not figure on the list. Of these, 37,59,630 names have been rejected and the remaining 2,48,077 are on hold.
Hearing an application by the All Assam Students Union, the court allowed it to file objections to wrongful inclusions and directed the NRC convener to give access to the draft NRC.
“We direct that to facilitate filing of objections against wrongful inclusions, the copies of the draft NRC be made available for inspection of all concerned at convenient locations i.e. Office of the District Magistrate/deputy Commissioner, Sub-divisional Offices (Civil), Circle Offices and Gram Panchayats. We further direct that so far as the filing of objections are concerned, the same may be done at the District Headquarters,” the court said.