No plan yet for NRC non-applicants

State Coordinator is yet to share share details of those who did not apply

Prateek Hajela

What will Assam do with the 3.9 lakh people who had opted out or not applied for inclusion in the National Register of Citizens (NRC)?

They don’t seem to be in the current scheme of things, at least while the exercise is on to publish the final list of citizens by August 31, a date fixed by the Supreme Court.

The draft NRC published on July 30, 2018, had excluded 4,007,707 people out of a total of 32,991,284 applicants. Another 102,462 were filtered out of those who made it to the draft NRC, and put in a list of rejected persons on June 26.

Officials handling the NRC exercise said 3,612,019 out of the 40.07 lakh in the first exclusion list had reapplied. There is no data on how many of the rejected persons in the second list have reapplied.

The State government indicated a plan would be worked out for the non-applicants once the NRC dust settles.

“The State Coordinator for NRC is yet to share the details [about those who did not apply],” said Ashutosh Agnihotri, Assam’s Home Commissioner and Secretary.

Studies have revealed that majority of poor tribal people do not possess or have not preserved legacy data — sets of documents that include the 1951 NRC and electoral rolls up to the midnight of March 24, 1971 — to prove their citizenship, despite being descendants of the indigenous peoples of Assam.