Congress MLA and leader of the Opposition in the Assam Assembly Debabrata Saikia on Thursday welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision to admit a writ petition by a retired Gorkha soldier and seven others seeking directives to ensure that the standard operating procedure enables genuine Indian citizens to uphold their citizenship after being omitted for “superfluous reasons” from the draft National Register of Citizens (NRC) published on July 30.
The petitioners, who do not figure in the NRC, include ex-soldiers Bir Bahadur Thapa of Morigaon and Ajmal Hoque of Boko, and Mohammed Harun Ali alias Dipak Deka of Golaghat, an adopted person with no linkage document of his biological parents.
The others are Haripad Biswas of Nazira, who had submitted the certificate of registration issued in the name of his father by the Agartala-based registration authority in 1956, Chan Mia of Chhaygaon who was declared as an Indian citizen by a Foreigners’ Tribunal on two separate occasions, and Guwahati-based retired teacher Sushil Kumar Paul, who was excluded because his father’s name was erroneously typed as ‘Burmud’ Paul instead of Kumud Paul in the legacy data document.
ADVERTISEMENT
Of the seven petitioners is Sayed Ali of Chhaygaon, whose three minor children have been placed ‘on hold’ in the draft NRC on the ground that their parents are facing trial as suspected foreigners. “This is untrue, as is the case of Samiron Nessa of Chhaygaon pursuing BA course under Gauhati University, who has been excluded on the ground that she is a declared foreigner,” Mr. Saikia said.
The admission of the petition by the apex court, he said, has infused new hope among the genuine citizens whose names have been omitted from the draft NRC.