Assam NRC: Bihar-born residents excluded from draft

The Nitish Kumar-led government has asked the district magistrates (DMs) in the state to speedily verify documents of 73,000 Bihar-born people residing in Assam, whose names have been excluded from the draft National Register of Citizens (NRC).

The move is aimed at ensuring that names of all the bona fide persons are included in the NRC.

The directive was issued after the names of 73,000 Biharis were excluded in the preliminary NRC prepared in Assam. The register has been prepared in accordance with the Assam Accord (of 1985) and is being implemented under the supervision of the Supreme Court.

The directive to Bihar DMs comes soon after the Assam government sent the documents of the excluded Biharis to the Nitish government for verification and authentication of papers.

“Of the 73,000 documents received so far, 52,110 have been sent to the districts, departments, boards and corporations for verification,” said Bihar’s Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi. “The authorities concerned have verified 5,418 documents. Others have been asked to speed up the paper verification work,” he added.

Not verified

Many people from Bihar, residing in Assam, could not enter their names in the NRC draft, published on July 30, as their documents were not verified by the Bihar government.

Of the 73,000 Biharis who found their names missing in the NRC, 8,716 belong to Saran, 8,022 are from Muzaffarpur and 3,936 from Vaishali.