FIRs have been lodged in Guwahati and Dibrugarh against Prateek Hajela, the Coordinator for Assam’s National Register of Citizens (NRC) for deliberately excluding “genuine Indian” citizens from the updated citizens’ list.
The first complaint was lodged on September 3 evening. The Asom Garia-Maria Yuba Chhatra Parishad lodged the FIR at Guwahati’s Latasil Police Station for producing an expensive “farcical” document that left out many indigenous people. The organisation represents the Garia and Maria, two categories of indigenous Assamese Muslims.
“The final NRC is a bhekubhaona (farce) and a waste of time and resources. It is full of anomalies with three members of a family in and two members out, armed forces personnel excluded, one son in and another out despite using the same legacy data. This shouldn’t have happened at least to the original inhabitants of the State,” a spokesperson of the organisation said on Wednesday.
The complaint against Mr. Hajela had been filed so that the government probed the entire process of the NRC updating exercise, the spokesperson said.
Inspector Upen Kalita, in charge of the police station, confirmed the registration of the FIR. “The subject is that many people have been excluded from the NRC intentionally,” he said.
On September 4, Chandar Mazumdar, a member of the All India Legal Aid Forum lodged an FIR against Mr. Hajela at a police station in eastern Assam’s Dibrugarh town. Mr. Mazumdar said the NRC Coordinator had his family deliberately excluded from the NRC.
“I am a bona fide citizen and my parents settled in Dibrugarh in 1947,” Mr. Mazumdar said, enclosing his family’s 1951 NRC with the FIR.
Other organisations too have upped the ante against Mr. Hajela. The All Assam Bengali Yuba-Chhatra Parishad has demanded his arrest and removal as the State NRC Coordinator for producing a “faulty” document that omits many “genuine Indians” and includes “foreigners”.
“More than 90% people excluded from the NRC are Hindus, and for this the State Coordinator is solely responsible,” the association’s president Swapan Kumar Mandal said.
Re-verification demand
After the Bharatiya Janata Party, the ruling regional ally Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) has asked the Supreme Court to let the documents of the people included in the NRC be re-verified.
“The final list falls way short of the perception that there are more than 50 lakh foreigners in Assam. The final NRC has not made the people hopeful about an Assam free of illegal immigrants,” AGP president and Agriculture Minister Atul Bora said.
The Muslim Kalyan Parishad too has demanded re-verification. “The indigenous people are not happy with the final NRC. It has insulted the sentiments of the local people and is thus not acceptable,” the organisation’s president Rahamsa Ali said.
