Fresh proposal for NRC divides Assam
Assam minister says would ask Centre to reject NRC
NEW DELHI/GUWAHATI: The prospects of another labyrinthine exercise to count Assam’s citizens and identify illegal migrants has baffled many and polarized opinions in a state that wrapped up the painstaking process only three months ago.
On August 31, Assam published the National Registrar of Citizens (NRC) which declared 1.9 million people of the state’s 32.9 million applicants virtually stateless.
Home minister Amit Shah told the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday that India would have a countrywide NRC and Assam would naturally be a part of it.
Almost on cue, Assam’s finance minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said in Guwahati that his government would ask the Centre to reject the Supreme Court-monitored NRC because it was “full of faults”.
“The state government cannot accept this NRC. People who should not have been included in the NRC have been included. And those who should have been included have been excluded,” Sarma told reporters.
In an interview to HT on September 3, Sarma had first suggested that Assam would be a part of another NRC soon.
The NRC, published in August, updated a citizens’ roll published back in 1951, also known as NRC 1951, in a state where locals have long alleged waves of illegal migration from neighbouring Bangladesh.
The process of updating the 1951 NRC, which started in 2015, had been elaborate. Citizens were required to show they or their ancestors were present in Assam before March 25, 1971 through “legacy data” comprising two sets of documents. One set would establish their ancestors’ presence in Assam before the cut-off date.
They needed to provide a second set of documents to trace lineage. However, it’s easy for people to be struck off the list in a country where record-keeping is poor.
“We welcome a new NRC because the last one was faulty. It has excluded deserving Hindu Bengalis, while illegal Muslim Bangladeshis have been included,” said Abhijit Sarma of Assam Public Works, an original litigant in the case. Many others slammed the move. “How can you say that the Supreme Court-monitored NRC was worthless?” said Hare Krishna Deka, a former police chief who heads the Axom Nagarik Manch (Assam’s citizens’ forum).
Just because the outcome of NRC does not help the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), its government wants to reject it now, said Aman Wadud, a human rights lawyer who fought cases for people left out of the NRC.
Experts pointed to legal hurdles. “The Centre has to first nullify the order of the Supreme Court judgment that ordered NRC in Assam on December 17, 2014,” said Upmanyu Hazarika, a senior advocate at Supreme Court. He said Assam did not need a fresh NRC but a re-verification of the data.
“I think Shah’s statement was a message to Hindu Bengalis and also to a large section of the Assamese speaking people who want more people to be excluded,” said Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty, the author of Assam: The Accord, the Discord.
Ripun Bora, MP and head of the Congress’s Assam unit, said Shah’s plan for a fresh NRC in Assam would “create turmoil, tear the country’s social fabric and lead to anarchy in the state.”
EXPERTS POINT TO LEGAL HURDLES. THE CENTRE HAS TO NULLIFY THE SC JUDGMENT THAT ORDERED NRC IN ASSAM ON DECEMBER 17, 2014