Why repetition of NRC agony? wonder many in Assam

Home Minister Amit Shah's announcement on Wednesday that National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise will again be carried out in Assam with rest of country left Robiul Islam, a mason here surprised and worried. Rabiul's six-member family in western Assam's Dhubri district, bordering Bangladesh were left out of the draft NRC released on July 31 last year.

"I spend over Rs. 40,000 to travel from one place to another to collect documents. Even we could not work properly since the draft was released last year. But when we managed to prove our citizenship after hearings and our names figured in the final list, why does the government now wants the NRC again?" asked Rabiul.

The mason fears that the fresh NRC exercise could be difficult since it would no longer be under the Supreme Court's supervision, unlike the earlier one.

"Now the government officials can manipulate and reject our applications. Earlier they could not do so out of fear of the Supreme Court," he said.

Dhubri is suspected to be a district having maximum number of "illegal migrants" from Bangladesh.

Assam government's demand to scrap the NRC conducted under the Supreme Court's supervision and carry out the exercise afresh left many in the state confused and angry.

"This is a disregard of the Supreme Court by the government and this will be a dangerous precedent in a constitutional democracy. The government is also playing with the people who undertook great trouble in appearing in a number of rounds of hearing to prove their citizenship through approved documents," said Hare Krishna Deka, former director general of Assam police and a writer here.

When pointed out that NRC exercise was carried out under the supervision of the Supreme Court, Assam minister and BJP leader Himanta Biswa Sarma on Wednesday said it was upto the Centre to take a call on who was authorised to scrap the NRC. Claiming that NRC exercise failed to fulfill the aspiration of the people of Assam, Sarma said, "This infact raised several questions, which we (government) now find it difficult to answer. For example, many are asking us why the refugee certificates issued to Hindu Bengalis or some others were not accepted even as it was one of the acceptable documents as per the NRC guidelines."

Reacting to Sarma's arguments, senior Congress leader, Debabrata Saikia said Narendra Modi government wants to carry out the NRC again without supervision of the Supreme Court so that a section of genuine citizens from the religious minority community can be excluded and a section of illegal migrants from the linguistic minority (Hindu Bengali) community can be included. "BJP also wants to keep the NRC issue simmering in order to further its agenda of polarization," he said.

"Around 3.29 crore people went through a great deal of trouble to collect documents. Some people had to sell livestock and property and had to travel up to 600 kilometers to previously unseen places to attend NRC hearings before the final phase. Some lost their lives during such journeys too," Saikia said.

Zamsher Ali, Assam co-ordinator of Citizens for Justice and Peace, an NGO, which provided legal assistance to those left out of the NRC said the government must take permission from the Supreme Court if it wanted to scrap the exercise.

"The government must also compensate the people who spent a lot of time and money starting from application to hearing process. A citizen can't be harassed repeatedly for a single work," he said.