Glitch could leave out many in Assam NRC draft: Official
GUWAHATI: A foreigners’ tribunal in Assam’s Barpeta declared Mumtaz Dewan, a housewife in her 40s, a citizen in 2016, 19 years after she was suspected to be an illegal immigrant and declared a doubtful voter (D voter).
Despite the clearance, Dewan has been unable to get herself registered as a genuine voter. She consequently faces exclusion from the 1951 National Register of Citizens (NRC), being updated under the Supreme Court’s supervision.
Dewan is not alone. A large number of Indian citizens may be omitted from the NRC draft being released on July 30. The NRC is being updated in deference to indigenous groups’ demands to detect and deport foreigners and illegal immigrants.
Election Commission (EC) officials blame the panel’s EROnet software, introduced in 2017, for problems people are facing. Officials point to the lack of a centralised database of citizens.
The software cannot remove the Assam-specific D voters’ category. As such, D voters declared citizens since early 2017 are still shown as D Voters in the state’s 2018 electoral rolls. Suspected illegal immigrants labelled D voters can get the tag removed after getting clearance from one of the state’s 100 foreigners tribunals.
“I am a Khilonjiya (indigenous) Muslim originally from Dhubri. They still branded me a D voter. And now that I have been declared a citizen they refuse to include me in NRC,” said Dewan
Dewan’s businessman husband, IIim Uddin, said this was happening despite getting the tribunal’s clearance.
“NRC authorities refuse to treat her as an Indian citizen despite the order.”
He said they went to the NRC Seva Kendra with the tribunal’s order. “They refused to entertain me, saying her name still remains on the D voters’ list with them.”
Barpeta’s election officer Pranjal Konwar acknowledged the software problem. “Yes, a large number of people declared as citizens last year are still shown as D voters because of the software and almost all districts have complained to (Assam)’s chief electoral officer,” he said.
NRC state coordinator Prateek Hajela said they are dependent on the chief electoral officer’s (CEO) office and Assam police’s border branch for information on pending cases of D voters.
The state has asked Hajela to develop a centralised database of people who have been through the citizenship verification process which can be accessed by the police, election officials and NRC. “I will start on it once we are done with the (NRC) draft,” Hajela said. Detection of foreigners and identification of D voters are parallel exercises which continue despite the NRC.
CEO Mukesh Chandra Sahu promised to ensure names of those declared citizens are back on the electoral rolls. “We are not responsible for what NRC is doing and I did not develop the software,” he said. A police officer and a deputy commissioner accepted that the lists of citizens marked as D voters were given to the concerned authorities, which means their exclusion from the NRC draft list.
They spoke on condition of anonymity.