Spare 34,000 personnel for updating NRC: SC to Assam
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the Assam government to ensure the 34,000 personnel employed to upgrade the draft National Register of Citizens (NRC) are exclusively put on the job to meet the March deadline. The exercise has been undertaken to identify and weed out illegal Bangladeshi immigrants.
The March deadline was fixed last year by the Supreme Court, which has on several occasions pulled up the Centre and the state governments for failing to stop the influx of migrants.
A bench headed by Justice Ranjan Gogoi rejected the state’s plea that such an order would result in the state “coming to a stand still” as work on several other projects and welfare schemes would get affected. It also turned down state coordinator Prateek Hajela’s plea seeking extension in the deadline.
“If you have any problem, come to us. We do not want the state to come to a standstil,” the bench told Assam government’s standing counsels Abhijit Roy and Krishna Sharma.
When Hajela shared his concern of not being able to meet the court deadline, the bench said, “…tell us you need more funds? You need more manpower?
Do you need more infrastructure? We will provide you.”
Hajela informed the court that the budget earmarked for the exercise had gone up from Rs 288 crore to `660 crore. He said the Centre was yet to clear the revised budget submitted to it by the state. Additional solicitor general PS Patwalia, appearing for the Centre, admitted that the revised estimate was under consideration of the competent authority.
“We have considered report of the state coordinator for NRC and have also heard the coordinator in person.
We direct that all the state government personnel deployed to update NRC shall henceforth be put on the job and will not be assigned any other work to ensure the work is completed on time,” the bench ordered after getting inputs from Hajela. It also gave liberty to organisations and social activists to place their suggestions before the state co-ordinator on how to undertake the exercise of identifying the illegal migrants.