Rs 1,600 Cr later, Assam NRC still in limbo; AASU seeks re-verification
The decision to prepare the NRC was taken in 2005, and finally the NRC State coordinator was appointed in 2013 and formal work started.;
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Guwahati, May 31: An expenditure of over Rs 1,600 crore, years of exercise involving hundreds of officers and men as well as thousands of data entry operators – and the end result? A big zero as of today. This is the story of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam.
The decision to prepare the NRC was taken in 2005, and finally the NRC State coordinator was appointed in 2013 and formal work started. After years of hectic work, the final NRC was published on August 31, 2019, rejecting the applications of 19 lakh persons who failed to provide adequate proof of their nationality.
But all the work went in vain as the NRC is yet to be implemented and no one is sure whether the government has accepted it or not.
The All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) is of the view that the NRC included names of suspected Bangladeshi nationals and it should be reviewed. The AASU also submitted an affidavit in the Supreme Court in this regard. But the court is yet to hear the matter.
Talking to The Assam Tribune on the issue, AASU president Utpal Sarma said that though the State and Central governments are claiming that they are not happy with the NRC, they should have filed petitions before the Supreme Court. But that was not done.
He said that an error-free NRC is a must for detection and deportation of foreigners from Assam. He pointed out that though the apex court did not give a stay on operation of the NRC, the government should have at least issued rejection slips to the persons whose applications for inclusion of names in the NRC were rejected.
There are some Indian citizens whose names were also excluded, but with the rejection slips, they could have approached the tribunals, he said.
Sarma said that pushing back only hundreds of foreigners would not solve any problem in Assam. “The problem in Assam is different from the rest of the country. Assam has faced serious demographic change due to unabated infiltration and sending back a few foreigners will not serve the purpose. Only an error-free NRC can help in this regard,” he added.