About 4.5 lakh of the 40,07,707 people excluded from the draft National Register of Citizens (NRC) have applied for re-inclusion in the list.
Simultaneously, the authorities have received 175 applications challenging the inclusion of names of suspected foreigners in the NRC meant for bona fide residents of Assam.
The complete draft of the Supreme Court-monitored NRC was published on July 30. It included the names of 2.9 crore of the total 3.29 crore applicants.
The claims and objections round of the exercise began on September 25 and is scheduled to end on December 15.
Officials associated with the exercise, requesting anonymity, said the pace of submitting applications for re-application is expected to pick up before the window of opportunity closes. “A month ago, only 1.02 lakh people had submitted their claim forms with the relevant documents,” an official said.
One of the reasons for the low turnout of applications is believed to have been the delay by the government in setting up a standard operating procedure (SOP) for the disposal of claims and objections.
The apex court too had taken time to allow five documents that State NRC Coordinator Prateek Hajela sought to be scrapped from the initial list of 15 documents to be submitted by the applicants.
The five documents, allowed on November 1, are: the 1951 NRC, electoral rolls up to March 24, 1971, Citizenship Certificate, Refugee Registration Certificate, and Ration Card. March 24, 1971, is the cut-off date for detecting and deporting illegal migrants as per the Assam Accord of 1985.
Indian Gorkhas
The Assam government has decided to stop marking members of the Gorkha community as suspected foreigners and referring them to foreigners tribunals. “The government will also move the Guwahati High Court for relief to members of the community whose cases are pending with the tribunals,” officials said.
The move follows a circular the Assam government has received from the Ministry of Home Affairs saying that Gorkhas who are citizens of India or who have Nepalese documents cannot be referred to foreigners tribunals to prove their citizenship.
According to All Assam Gorkha Students’ Union president Prem Tamang, more than 20,000 Gorkhas have been wrongfully marked as D-voters despite having all documents. “Some 150,000 Gorkhas have also been left out of the draft NRC because of various reasons, including the D-voter tag,” he said.
