NRC controversy: FIR lodged against Prateek Hajela for 'inclusion of illegal migrants'

Adding to the controversy over Assam's National Register of Citizens (NRC), an NGO lodged an FIR against Prateek Hajela, the former state-co-ordinator, alleging manipulation in "family trees" to include names of foreigners in the NRC list.

The FIR was lodged with Assam CID on Wednesday by Assam Public Works (APW), an NGO, based on whose petition in 2009, the Supreme Court had ordered for updating the NRC to solve Assam's long foreigner problem.

"Inclusion of very high percentage of illegal and doubtful persons’ name in NRC, it is suspected that there have been manipulations in the family tree verification. We suspect that Prateek Hajela (the then State coordinator, NRC, Assam) and his close associates in collaboration with some officers with migrant backgrounds, data entry operators and some minority leaders also with some anti-national elements used the government mechanism to insert the names of the illegal migrants in the updated NRC," said the FIR lodged by Aabhijeet Sharma of APW.

A "family tree" was prepared by the NRC office through a software based on the details and documents submitted by applicants to prove their links with their parents or grandparents having pre-1971 documents. The NRC was prepared with March 24, 1971 as the cut-off date with an aim to segregate the post-1971 migrants.

The family tree verification did not work properly as the data entry operators and other verification officers working in the immigrant dominated areas were from the immigrant community. It may be mentioned that before engagement of the DEOs, their citizenship was never verified though there were some police verification regarding common criminal activities, said the FIR.

Stating that software for family tree matching was prepared by Hajela in such a way that no superior officers could make any quality check, the FIR alleged that the officers with "migrant background" got a free hand to include names of the suspected foreigners at their will. "The entire mischief was done by the then State Coordinator in connivance with some anti-national element. Absence of any quality checks in such a huge operation involving thousands of officials itself leads to the suspicion that Hajela did it wilfully for his personal interest," Sharma said in the FIR.

Over 19.06 lakh persons out of 3.29 crore applicants did not figure in the final list of the NRC, which was released in August 2019.

Hajela, who was deputed to Madhya Pradesh by the Supreme Court, could not be contacted for his reaction regarding the allegations.

The FIR comes when Assam government and present NRC state co-ordinator Hitesh Dev Sarma approached the Supreme Court seeking re-verification of the NRC list alleging anomalies in the multi-crore exercise.