Not just Muslims, even Hindu Bengalis left out

GUWAHATI: A day after the complete draft of the National Register of Citizens in Assam was published, families and individuals whose names do not feature on the list expressed a sense of disbelief at not being included in it, even as they expressed hope that they will still be able to prove their status.

Interestingly, the exclusions also have a fair share of Hindu Bengalis. Among them is the wife of Dilip Kumar Pal, the BJP legislator from Silchar and the former deputy speaker of the Assam Assembly.

But, Pal laughed at the exclusion saying the entire process Supreme Court monitored.

Pal’s family, like thousands of other Hindus fled to Barak Valley from East Pakistan fearing persecution post partition. Pal said his wife Archana submitted all the documents that were needed for her inclusion in the NRC. “There are lakhs of people who are not there. More than 4 lakh in three Barak Valley districts alone,” he said.

She is not the only one. A similar confusion and disbelief greeted visitors to the Das household in Pandu, a settlement by the Brahmaputra river in Guwahati. “I was born here,” said Basanti Das, the 60-year-old mother. “We submitted refugee registration card of my husband issued in 1956,” she added. Names of Basanti, daughter Jhumur, son-inlaw Pritish Chandra Das and their three children are not in the draft. However, she claimed that names of her husband’s other family members, who live in Goalpara were there in the list.

Around 20% of 51,000 applications in Pandu have not found a place in the NRC list, said CK Baisya, a senior official at the Pandu NRC Nagrik Seva Kendra. “All kinds of people, Muslims, Bengali Hindus, Biharis are there who have not found a place (in the list),” he said. There is reason for this, explained the state’s top official in charge of the NRC. “Every individual in the family has to prove his link to the legacy person through a proper document,” said Prateek Hajela, the state coordinator of the NRC. “It may be the case that one person has submitted a correct document while the other family member has not,” he added. “Claims and objections will be a more expansive exercise,” he said .

That Supreme Court said the list published on Monday cannot be the basis for any coercive action by any authority. “What has been published is a complete draft NRC. It can’t be the basis for any action by any authority,” said a bench of Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman as Attorney General KK Venugopal pointed to the magnitude of the problem.