New Delhi: An additional draft list of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) will be released by the NRC authority in Assam on 26 June. The draft list will contain the names of people who were included in the final draft of the NRC published on 30 July last year, but later found ineligible or wrongfully included.
According to an advertisement from the NRC office, after re-verification, those who were identified as “doubtful voters” or “declared foreigner” or PFT (persons with cases pending at Foreigners Tribunal) or their children and grand-children will be exempted from the additional draft. It also states that people who are found ineligible in the hearings of “claims and objection” too will be excluded from the draft list. It further reads that people who will be excluded will be informed by a letter of information. They can file their claim before 11 July and their cases will be resolved before the publication of final NRC due to be published on 31 July 2019.
“D voter” or “doubtful voters” are those whose citizenship is doubted by Election Commission and cases are referred to Border Police, whose task is to detect and identify illegal foreigners. There are allegations of arbitrary arrest by Border Police which came to media attention when a retired army officer and Kargil war veteran, Sanaullah, was declared a foreigner and detained by Border Police.
Ashraful Hussain, a Barpeta-based activist, said: “We were expecting that the issue of citizenship will be resolved by the NRC process. The problem of false case against genuine Indian citizens without any fair investigation by Election Commission and Border Police is still not solved by NRC. Victims are still denied of justice. Foreigner Tribunals too are biased. So we have a little hope for justice.’’ He also said that the due list which will exclude the names of ‘D’ voters and their children and grand-children has made it clear that the problem of ‘D’ voters cannot be solved within the ambit of NRC.
The final draft of the NRC which was released on 30 July last year included 2.89 crore names and around 4 million people could not make it to the final draft. During the “claims and objection, reportedly many false cases of “objection” surfaced against genuine Indian citizens, including some prominent names of Assamese society.
Shyamal Sarkar, chief adviser of All BTC Bengali Students’ Federation, said, “We all respect and support the NRC. But the harassment in the name of it must be stopped. Arbitrary ‘objections’ were filed against around 4 lakh genuine and poor Indian citizens by some leaders who claim themselves as Assamese nationalists. However, on the day of hearing, none of the objectors turned up. This is nothing but harassment on linguistic and religious minority lines.’’ Alleging all this as a conspiracy to delay the whole process of NRC, adviser of All Assam Muslim Student Union, Azizur Rahman, told The Sunday Guardian, “NRC is being monitored by the Supreme Court. Around 52,000 employees are working on this. Now they are saying that some names are included by mistake in the final draft of last year. Why do they do such mistakes? It’s because of their mistake that the general public is suffering. So we suspect that it is a conspiracy to delay the whole process by misguiding the Supreme Court.’’
However, Lurinjyoti Gogoi, general secretary of the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU), the organisation which led the famous Assam agitation against illegal immigrants in the 1980s and signatory of the Assam Accord which laid the foundation for an updated NRC, said: “Those who are illegal foreigners must be excluded from the NRC and names of all indigenous people must be included.”
Speaking about the arbitrary “objections”, he said, “The names of those who are genuine Indian citizens will come on the NRC once they produce their documents. The main thing is still there are allegations that many foreigners are included in the NRC. The government has provision that if someone is deemed as a foreigner, they can do sue moto verification.”