NRC authorities in Assam move SC for complete reverification of the list

Even as the BJP-led government in Assam wants only a sample reverification of the NRC applications, the NRC authorities in the state have moved the Supreme Court with a plea for a complete, comprehensive and time-bound reverification of the draft list as well as the supplementary list that triggered a citizenship crisis in the state in August 2019.

In an interlocutory application submitted to the Supreme Court on May 8, Hitesh Dev Sarma, state co-ordinator of the NRC claimed "major irregularities" in carrying out the exercise and the verification of the applications, calling for complete reverification of the lists.

The application also prayed for deletion of the names of "illegal voters" from Assam's electoral rolls.

The plea was submitted two days before new Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said that the BJP-led government was in favour of 20 per cent sample reverification of applications in the districts bordering Bangladesh and 10 per cent in remaining districts for an error-free NRC list.

The draft NRC, which was published in June 2018 had left out over 40 lakh persons, who could not prove with documents that they or their forefathers lived in Assam on or before March 24, 1971, the cut-off decided in the Assam Accord of 1971. The number of those left out of the citizenship verification exercise came down to a little over 19.06 lakh in the final list released in August 2019. The NRC list was prepared under the supervision of the Supreme Court and IAS officer, Prateek Hajela was the state co-ordinator. Hajela, however, was transferred by the apex court to Madhya Pradesh, after the BJP government criticised his role.

Sarma was later appointed as the new coordinator.

The final NRC was supposed to end Assam's long-standing issue, which is also a topical political problem in the state. However, the ruling BJP and a few other pro-NRC organisations refused to accept the final list claiming that many "ineligible persons" fraudulently made it to the list. Sources said BJP was unhappy with the final list as in those left out, the number of Hindus was more than Muslims, whom they call infiltrators.

Anomalies

The application admitted that the NRC exercise initially created a huge digitised databank of NRC of 1951 and electoral rolls of Assam till 1971, but it cited difficulty in detection of “manipulated or manufactured secondary documents” and "fraudulent entry" in electoral rolls through office and field verification.

"Out of the 40,07,719 persons excluded from the draft NRC, 3,93,976 did not file any claims and they were put on the final exclusion list. After some sample checks now and analysis of the names of the persons who did not file claims on the basis of surnames only, it was found that 50,695 persons were apparently eligible for inclusion in the NRC,” the application said.

It said out of these, 7,770 were found to be from groups categorised as “original inhabitant (OI)” while 42,925 were “persons from other States”.

"This figure may increase if detailed reverification was done. For a flawless and complete NRC, names of these people had to be included in the final NRC, failing which it would lose its acceptability," the application said.