Rolls, not NRC, to determine voters in Assam, says EC
GUWAHATI: The Election Commission of India made it clear on Wednesday that those living in Assam whose names are missing from the updated National Register of Citizens (NRC), but are listed in the electoral rolls can vote in the assembly elections due in April-May this year.
“A union home ministry notification dated August 29, 2019 clearly stated [that] non-inclusion of a person’s name in NRC doesn’t amount to him/her being declared a foreigner. By implication, such persons remain in voters’ list and shall be eligible to vote until a decision is taken by the concerned tribunal,” said Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sunil Arora.
Around 1.9 million (of 33 million applicants) were left out of the updated National Register of Citizens published for Assam on August 31, 2019.
The NRC was a list intended to identify legal residents and weed out illegal immigrants from Assam. Those left out of the updated NRC were given the option of appealing to foreigners’ tribunals.
“The NRC is yet to be notified and several matters related to it are still pending in Supreme Court. Hence, there no question of our party reacting to the CEC’s remarks on allowing those left out of the NRC to vote,” said Roopam Goswami, a spokesperson for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
“The NRC is yet to be become a legal document hence it is desirable that till it is notified, those left out of it should be allowed to vote. But we also want that the updated NRC is notified soon as it was one of the promises made by the BJP prior to coming to power in Assam in 2016,” said Debabrata Saikia, leader of the Congress legislature party in the Assam assembly.
“There’s no link of NRC with voters’ list as the latter is not updated with inputs from the former. Additionally, the Registrar General of India is yet to notify the updated NRC... ,” said Abhijeet Sharma of the Assam Public Works, a Guwahati-based NGO whose petition in the Supreme Court had led to the start of the NRC updating process in 2015.