Assam asked Centre to reject NRC: Himanta
NRC FOR ALL Says not asking for Assam Accord to be scrapped, asking for one cut-off year
NEW DELHI/SAGARDIGHI (WB)/GUWAHATI: Assam finance minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said the state government has requested the Centre to reject the recently published National Register of Citizens (NRC).
At a press conference in Guwahati, Sarma said, “The Assam government has not accepted the NRC. The government of Assam and the BJP have requested the home minister to reject the NRC.”
He said the state government favoured one national NRC with one cut-off year for the entire country. “If the cut-off year is 1971, then it should be the same for all states... We are not asking to scrap the Assam Accord,” he added.
Criticising the earlier NRC state coordinator Prateek Hajela, the minister alleged that the entire exercise of updation was carried out keeping aside the state government.
“But the entire nation thinks that NRC was updated by the Assam government. We are bearing the brunt because of one individual. We are concerned with the flaws in the system.
“The way Hajela ran the show under a different eco- system, it has created a multiple layer of questions. As a public representative, we are unable to answer them now,” Sarma said.
Meanwhile, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has said said on Wednesday that she would never allow the NRC in her state. Banerjee was reacting to Union home minister Amit Shah’s statement in Rajya Sabha he same day that NRC will be implemented nationwide.
Shah had said, “The NRC exercise is monitored by the Supreme Court. No religion has been targeted or isolated during the NRC exercise” to Congress leader Syed Nasir Hussain’s query whether the NRC provides citizenship to immigrants of six non-muslim faiths. Responding to that, Banerjee assured people that she will never allow NRC in the state. She also sought answers from the BJP over the exclusion of 14 lakh Hindus and Bengalis from the final NRC list in Assam.
“There are a few people who are trying to create disturbance in the state in the name of implementation of NRC. I want to make it very clear that we will never allow NRC in Bengal.
The NRC found a mention in a brief by a US government panel as well which called it a “downward trend in religious freedom” in India. The US International Commission on Religious Freedom (USICRF) said, “The NRC as a tool to target religious minorities and, in particular, to render Indian Muslims stateless has become one more example of the downward trend in religious freedom conditions within India.”