NRC: WHO’S IN, WHO’S OUT? PART II
On August 3, thousands of people from Assam whose names had been included in the state’s draft National Register of Citizens (NRC) published last year received notices asking them to appear before designated authorities for re-verification— in some cases, hundreds of kilometres away from their homes—within two or three days. For instance, some residents of Sontoli village, in Kamrup district, were asked to appear for hearings in Golaghat, some 450 km away. As a result, these notices caused panic among the recipients—most of whom were Muslim farmers and daily-wage labourers.
The notices were in direct contravention of an order passed by the Supreme Court on April 10, instructing NRC authorities to ‘ensure that no inconvenience is caused to the persons required to attend the hearing, and see that they are not required to travel long distances, if
possible’. The re-verification procedure approved by the Supreme Court also states that authorities are to ‘ensure that the applicant is served the notice at least 15 days prior to the hearing’.
Questions have also been raised about the timing of these notices—they were issued just two days after Assam’s minister of commerce and industry, transport and parliamentary affairs, Chandra Mohan Patowary, questioned the efficiency of state NRC coordinator Prateek Hajela in the state assembly. Patowary also revealed some confidential numbers—the Supreme Court had sought this data from NRC authorities in a sealed envelope—to highlight anomalies in the NRC update process.
However, what is most curious about Hajela’s decision to send out these notices is that it contradicts his own submission to the apex court on July 23. At the time, he had stated that there was no need for further re-verification, as over 7.2 million people—27 per cent of those included in the draft NRC—had been re-verified already. “Perhaps he wants to please someone. He knows that such notices will create logistical issues, which may help the NRC authorities exclude more names. However, I believe that this NRC includes [the names of] many illegal immigrants, and will [ask] the Supreme Court for close scrutiny [of this] in the next hearing, on August 7. The verification must not be a farce like the one conducted by Hajela,” says Abhijit Sarma, head of Assam Public Works, an NGO, who had filed a PIL in the apex court in 2009 demanding an update of the NRC. (The current exercise is the conse
quence of that PIL.)
And it’s not just Sarma who is unhappy. Though Union home minister and BJP president Amit Shah has often said that the NRC will be extended to all states in India—the Union home ministry has issued circulars to all state governments, requiring them to build detention centres to house illegal immigrants—the BJP is not happy with the current state of the NRC in Assam. Bearing this out, the Assam government and the Centre, both run by the BJP, had requested an extension of the NRC deadline to carry out a sample re-verification of 20 per cent of the names in the register from districts bordering Bangladesh, and a 10 per cent re-verification from the remaining districts. The Supreme Court bench, headed by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi, rejected the plea on the grounds of Hajela’s submission that 27 per cent of the names in the draft NRC had already been examined. The court, however, extended the deadline by a month—to August 31— to carry out quality checks and tie up loose ends. (The final NRC was to have been published on July 31.)
The BJP’s discomfort is somewhat understandable. According to several NRC officials, a large number of Hindus and tribals have been excluded from the register, while most people from districts near the Bangladesh border—which are perceived as being dominated by illegal Muslim immigrants—have made their way into the register. For instance, the exclusion rate in South Salmara was 7.22 per cent, Dhubri 8.26 per cent and Karimganj 7.67 per cent, while the average exclusion rate across the state is 12.15 per cent. “It is a matter of concern that the percentage of names excluded from the draft NRC is lower in the Bangladesh border districts compared to the rest of the state,” says Patowary. “Even Assamese people have been excluded from the NRC,” says state BJP president Ranjeet Dass.
That is also why the BJP is anxious to amend the Citizenship Act, 1955, to provide a route to citizenship for Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian immigrants from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Though the Citizenship Amendment Bill, introduced in the Lok Sabha in 2016, covers refugees from the three nations, it was primarily aimed at protecting Bengali Hindu migrants from Bangladesh. However, as the Modi government could not get the bill passed in the Rajya Sabha during its previous term, the bill lapsed. Prime Minister Modi and home minister Shah have, however, reiterated that the BJP is committed to having it passed. ■
On August 3, thousands of Assam residents recieved notifications from the NRC asking them to appear for re-verification