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4,800 ineligible people in updated NRC, HC informed
The court was hearing a petition by Rahima Begam, a resident of Mukalmua in Nalbari district, who had challenged a 2019 order of a foreigners’ tribunal that had declared her a foreigner.
Nearly 4,800 ineligible persons got included in the updated National Register of Citizens (NRC) for Assam, says an affidavit filed in the Gauhati high court, according to court documents.
The affidavit was filed this week by the office of the Assam state coordinator for NRC in the court of justices Manojit Bhuyan and Soumitra Saikia in connection with a petition. According to the affidavit, the NRC office detected 4,795 ineligible persons whose names got included in the list while verifying details of 10,199 persons after the updated list was released in August last year. These persons included doubtful (D) voters, declared foreigners, persons against whom cases are pending in foreigners’ tribunals and their family members — all categories which were to be excluded from the updated NRC.
Similarly, among the 10,199 persons whose details were verified, it was found that names of 5,404 persons which should have got included in the NRC didn’t find themselves in the list.
In October this year, the high court had asked the NRC state coordinator to file a comprehensive affidavit on how some ineligible persons managed to get included in the final list.
The court was hearing a petition by Rahima Begam, a resident of Mukalmua in Nalbari district, who had challenged a 2019 order of a foreigners’ tribunal that had declared her a foreigner.
But despite the tribunal’s order, Begam’s name was in the NRC list, which aimed to weed out illegal foreigners.
The court noted that the present case was of “great importance” and was not a “solitary instance” and stressed that insertions of names of ineligible persons in the NRC list was “against the law”.
The updated NRC released in August last year had excluded over 1.9 million of the 33 million people who had applied to be included in the list that sought to identify genuine Indian citizens in Assam and weed out illegal immigrants.
The exercise, which involved updation of a similar list in 1951, was done following a Supreme Court order and was conducted under its supervision.
Soon after its release, almost all political parties and organisations in the state denounced the list, saying it included names of ineligible persons and left out many genuine citizens.
