New Delhi, July 23; GANASHAKTI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to extend the deadline for the publication of the final National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam by a month. The new date now is August 31, instead of July 31.
Hearing a bunch of petitions related to the NRC, a two-member bench of the apex court, comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Rohinton Nariman, however, rejected the plea of the Centre and the Assam government to re-verify 20% of the names already included in the draft NRC in the districts of the state bordering Bangladesh. These districts are Cachar, South Salmara, Karimganj and Dhubri. Barring Cachar, the rest are Muslim-majority districts.
In the last hearing of the case, on July 19, the Assam government had batted for 20% sample re-verification of border district residents’ names already in the draft NRC and re-verification of 10% of the names of people residing in the rest of the districts. The state government had argued in the apex court that “India cannot be the refugee capital of the world”.
Attorney General K.K. Venugopal and Advocate General Tushar Mehta, representing the Centre and Assam government respectively, sought an extension of the July 31 deadline to conduct the sample survey. Mehta reportedly argued that it was necessary to quell the growing perception in many that “illegal immigrants” might have infiltrated into the NRC in connivance with local officers while “genuine Indian citizens” were left out.
They asked that the re-verification be done by Class I officers of the government from other districts.
Last year, the court had told Assam Public Works, one of the primary petitioners in the case, that it might seek 10% sample re-verification in some districts.
However, it didn’t proceed on that count later. Government representatives referred to that order of the Supreme Court in their July 19 plea to look into “invalid inclusions and exclusions”.
However, the court, on July 23, rejected that plea.
On July 19, state coordinator for NRC, Prateek Hajela, told the court that his department could publish a supplementary list on July 31 and a comprehensive one, a month later. Seeking time, he brought to the court’s notice that nearly all districts of the state were facing a serious flood situation which had slowed down the process of updating the NRC. The court, on July 23, finally agreed to his plea.
The court also sided with his contention that there was no necessity to carry out a re-verification exercise. The next date of hearing has been scheduled as August 7.
The apex court said while the first draft of the NRC was published on December 31, 2017, with the names of 2,89,83,677 applicants, the final draft was only released on July 31, 2018. The final draft NRC left out 40,07,007 people, out of whom nearly 36 lakh filed claims to be included.
The NRC of 1951, an exclusive exercise carried out in Assam, is being updated as per a cut-off date – March 24, 1971 – upon by the Central government, the All Assam Students Union (AASU) and the All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad in 1985 to bring an end to a six-year-long anti-foreigner agitation in the bordering state.
