DO NOT RELY ON NRC FOR DISPOSAL OF CASES, ASSAM TRIBUNALS TOLD

SILCHAR: State Coordinator of National Register of Citizens ( NRC), Assam, Hitesh Dev Sharma has requested members of foreigners tribunals across the state not to consider draft NRC and supplementary list as reliable evidence for disposal of cases under judicial or quasi-judicial process.

Dev Sharma, in a letter issued on April 18, said there are errors in the NRC list published earlier due to wrong data entry in the process of updation.

“Final NRC is yet to be published by the Registrar General of Citizens Registration which is mandatory as per cause 7 of the Schedule of the Citizenship Rules, 2003. Before that there is possibility reverification of names considering the errors. Results of the Draft NRC and Supplementary list may change when Final NRC gets published,” he wrote in the letters.

Dev Sharma said it has been observed that while disposing cases in FTs, various documents relating to NRC are being called from the district registrar of citizen registration (deputy commissioner) and state coordinator of NRC.

“You are requested not to rely on the NRC draft and supplementary list published so far till the Final NRC is published by the Registrar General of India of Citizens Registration,” he wrote to the judges.

The NRC, first prepared only for Assam in 1951, was updated since 2015 following directions from the Supreme Court.

The complete draft of NRC released in July, 2018 had left out 4 million of the 33 million applicants. An additional list released in June, 2019, had excluded 100,000 more taking the total tally to 4.1 million.

The final National Register of Citizen list released in August,2019 included 2.2 million of those left out from the earlier lists, but kept out 1.9 million.

The list is yet to be notified by the Registrar General of India and almost all parties and organisations in Assam, including the state government, has termed it as faulty for leaving out genuine applicants and including illegal immigrants.