1.5 lakh names will be deleted from final draft

In what has surcharged the political atmosphere of the state, the state coordinator of National Register of Citizens ( NRC) here on Wednesday said that names of nearly 1.50 lakh persons, whose names had appeared in the first draft published on December 31, would be dropped from the final draft of the NRC.

The first draft of NRC which was published on December 31,2017 had included the names of 1.9 crore people out of the 3.29 crore total applicants in Assam, recognising them as legal citizens of India.

The NRC coordinator Prateek Hajela pointed out that names of 65,694 persons, whose names appeared in the first draft, were found to be inadmissible during the family tree verification, while, names of 48,456 married women, who produced Panchayat certificates as linkage were also found to be non- admissible in the NRC.

Informing that NRC authorities while carrying out quality control checks found that names of another 19,783 persons cannot be included in the final draft, he said that a few more such cases may come up during the final quality control checks.

He, however, clarified that these people would be given an opportunity to prove their citizenship by filing claims after the publication of the final draft.

The NRC authorities also informed that the names of doubtful voters and those whose cases are going on in the Foreigners Tribunals are also not going to be included in the final draft. “We have not deleted their names and only kept them on the hold. If they win the cases in the Foreigners’ Tribunals, their names will be included in the NRC later,” he added.

Asserting that they have been trying to make the NRC error free, Mr Hajela reiterated that for Indian citizens whose name doesn’t appear in the final draft of the NRC, it was not the end of the road, all such Indian citizens would be given opportunity to file claims and objections. The NRC authorities claimed that the process of verification has been completed and the data entry work is going on in full swing. As per the schedule submitted to the Supreme Court by the State Coordinator, the data entry work should be completed by July 10.