E-Paper
Will remove names of those who got enrolled in NRC by fraud: Assam CM
Himanta Biswa Sarma was speaking on the sidelines of an event in Guwahati to mark Swahid Diwas to commemorate the deaths of over 800 people in the Assam Agitation (1979-85) against illegal infiltrators from Bangladesh
Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Sunday said that his government will try and take steps to remove names of those applicants who had enrolled in the National Register of Citizens (NRC) using fraudulent means.
The CM made these remarks while speaking on the sidelines of an event in Guwahati to mark Swahid Diwas (Martyrs Day) to commemorate the deaths of over 800 people in the Assam Agitation (1979-85) against illegal infiltrators from Bangladesh.
“We are preparing a big plan to find out details of those who entered their names in the NRC using forgery and try and remove them from the list. We have started discussing this with various experts,” Sarma said without divulging details of the plan or how it will be executed.
Speaking on Clause 6 (that assured constitutional, legislative and administrative safeguards for Assamese people) of the Assam Accord, which was signed in 1985, the CM said that his government has already taken steps to protect land rights of the state’s indigenous population and almost 100% of all government jobs in Assam are given to local residents.
Updating of the 1951 NRC for Assam was done under directions of Supreme Court in order to detect illegal citizens who had entered the state after March 25, 1971. The final NRC list published in August 2019 had left out 1.9 million of the 33 million applicants on suspicion of their claims as Indian citizens.
The final NRC, which is yet to be notified by Registrar General of India (RGI) has been rejected as incorrect by the state’s BJP-led government stating that that it had many anomalies and left out eligible persons and included illegal immigrants.
The Assam government has since approached the Supreme Court seeking a review of the entire exercise. Several local organisations in Assam have also rejected the list and have approached SC seeking review. All those petitions are pending before the apex court.
In its report released in December last year, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India had detected large scale anomalies in updating the National Register of Citizens (NRC) for Assam.
The CAG recommended fixing responsibility of the former state coordinator of NRC, Prateek Hajela, and action in a time bound manner for the excess, irregular and inadmissible payment made to the vendor.
