Hitesh Dev Sarma moves Supreme Court for re-verifying NRC names- draft had excluded over 19 lakh applicants

The draft updated list, yet to be notified by the Registrar General of India, had excluded over 19 lakh applicants

Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma.: File photo

Umanand Jaiswal   |  TT  |  Guwahati   | 14.05.21: NRC state coordinator Hitesh Dev Sarma has moved the Supreme Court for a “complete comprehensive and time-bound reverification” of the draft updated citizen register following the detection of major anomalies during an internal stock-taking before issuing rejection slips to those who have been excluded in Assam.

Sarma, who took over as the NRC coordinator in December 2019, has also requested for the re-verification process to be conducted under the supervision of a monitoring committee in each district “preferably by the respective district judge, district magistrate and superintendent of police”.

The 38-page petition was filed on Tuesday, a day after Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma told the media that the state government wants re-verification of 20 per cent names in the NRC in the bordering districts and 10 per cent elsewhere. The draft updated list, yet to be notified by the Registrar General of India, had excluded over 19 lakh applicants.

Urging the apex court, which had monitored the exercise, to revisit the draft updated register, published on August 31, 2019, in its entirety, the NRC coordinator’s application said while preparation was on to issue the rejection slips to excluded applicants so that they could approach the foreigners tribunals to seek redressal, “some issues of substantive importance cropped up” leading to a delay in the process.

“That, while trying to solve the issues, some glaring anomalies have also been noticed, which to the best of the knowledge of the applicant, is of very serious nature and the same needs to be brought to the knowledge of this Hon’ble Court as the NRC updation process is being monitored by the Hon’ble Court and the whole NRC updation process is related to the security and the integrity of the nation,” the plea said.

The anomalies included huge mismatch in the family tree submitted by applicants, mismatch in official documents submitted by applicants and inclusion of ineligible applicants in the “Original Inhabitants” category.

The documents submitted by the applicants in support of their claims were initially verified through office and field verification. Though it had helped a lot towards preparation of a correct NRC, this verification “cannot be termed as error-free and conclusive”, the petition said.

“The office verification process had helped in detection of only forged documents but; it could in no manner help detect any manipulated/manufactured secondary document which is used to ‘procure’ the main document. For example, a name in the electoral roll may be verified through back-end verification. But the Office Verification cannot detect whether the name in the electoral roll was entered fraudulently with the strength of some forged/manipulated documents; this is because there had been no back-end verification in the preparation of electoral rolls,” the petition said.

The 1951 NRC was updated under the monitoring of the Supreme Court with March 24, 1971, as the cut-off date as stated in the 1985 Assam Accord for detection and deportation of illegal migrants, especially those allegedly from Bangladesh.

The neighbouring country shares a 267.5km-long border with Assam’s Karimganj (3km), Cachar (70km), Dhubri (90km) and South Salmara-Mankachar (63km) districts.

According to the petition, out of the 40,07,719 persons excluded from the draft NRC, 3,93,975 persons did not file any claims. After an analysis, it was found that roughly 50,000 persons were apparently eligible for inclusion in the NRC under the categories of “Originally Inhabitants” and “Persons from other States”.

For a flawless and complete NRC, names of these persons have to be included in the final NRC, failing which it will lose its “credibility and acceptability”. A detailed re-verification is required to know the exact number of persons excluded from the NRC, the petition said.

There is “no option” for these excluded persons to appeal before the foreigners tribunals as the Clause 8 Schedule (under rule 4A(4) of the Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003) allows only those persons who are not satisfied with the result of claims and objection to appeal before the tribunals and these persons did not take part in the claims and objections process.

Guwahati-based human rights lawyer Amnan Wadud urged the apex court to “stop” the mockery of a process, which it monitored.

Wadud tweeted: “Entire NRC process was monitored by the Supreme Court, executed by the BJP govt. BUT as the number of exclusion (1.9mil) does not suit the political narrative of BJP, they want to ‘re-verify’ the NRC now. Time for SC to stop the mockery of a process monitored by the SC itself.”

An earlier plea for sample re-verification of NRC names by the erstwhile Sarbananda Sonowal-led government was rejected by the Supreme Court after the then NRC state coordinator Prateek Hajela apprised the court that 27 per cent of the included names were re-verified.