Court pulls up Centre over plea to suspend NRC work
NEW DELHI: Supreme Court rebuked the central government on Tuesday for asking the court to suspend work on updating of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam because of the upcoming Lok Sabha polls. Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi remarked that the Union home ministry was seeking to destroy the “NRC process”.
A bench comprising CJI Gogoi and justice RF Nariman rejected the Centre’s request to put the NRC work in abeyance from the date of notification of parliamentary elections, which are yet to be announced, until two weeks after polling.
“Is it too much to ask that Lok Sabha polls and NRC work should go on simultaneously and peacefully… The ministry of home affairs has been making efforts from the very beginning to destroy NRC process,” the CJI told attorney general (AG) KK Venugopal when the latter, on behalf of the Centre, made the request to keep the NRC work on hold. The final draft of NRC for Assam, published last year, excluded four million names and included 28.9 million. The register is now being updated under the supervision of the Supreme Court in a process that involves filing of claims and objections with the state coordinator of NRC by those who have been left out. The top court has set a July 31, 2019 deadline to finalise the NRC, turning down a joint request by the Assam government and the NRC coordinator to extend the date. Under “no circumstances” can the deadline be stretched beyond July 31, it said, adding that both elections and the NRC process should receive equal importance.
On Tuesday, Venugopal said the government should be allowed to withdraw central police forces in Assam for the NRC process so that they can be assigned election duties. The law officer wanted the court to relieve 167 companies of central armed police forces.
Venugopal’s submissions did not go down well with the bench. It observed: “Why do you want to withdraw the force? It looks you don’t want the NRC exercise to go on. We are left with no other option but to say that the ministry of home affairs does not want the NRC exercise to go on.
We are very sorry to say that the impression the ministry of home affairs is giving is that it is not willing to continue with the NRC work.”
The AG, however, remained persuasive. He said the NRC work should be stopped for at least two weeks during the general elections. The reason cited by him was that the forces deployed in Assam were needed to be put on duty in different parts of the country.
Also, he said the “anticipated political atmosphere in the country would be surcharged during the elections and it would not be conducive for the NRC exercise to go on during that period also.”
At this, the CJI asked a senior home ministry official present in the courtroom about the actual strength of the combined armed police forces in the country. On being told that there are about 3,000 companies, out of which 2,700 would be required for poll duty, the CJI asked him: “Then why do you want to disturb the 167 companies deployed for NRC work?. There are still 300 companies left with the government.”