In Assam’s updated citizen register, names of over 40 lakh not included

Mangalore Today News Network

Assam, Jul 30, 2018 : The government of Assam on Monday made public the Supreme-Court mandated final draft list of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) to ascertain illegal immigrants amid tight security arrangement across the state.

 

“Two crore eighty-nine lakhs, eighty three thousand six hundred and seventy seven people have been found eligible to be included in the National Register of Citizens,” state NRC coordinator said on Monday.

Over 3.29 crore people had applied to be on the list. The coordinator said that all the people whose name does not feature on the list would get ample opportunity to file claims and objections.

The register is an exercise which was first carried out in 1951 to enumerate the citizens, their houses and holdings. The list was updated to weed out illegal immigrants as per a provision of the Assam Accord signed in 1985 after a six-year agitation against Bangladeshis.

Elaborate security arrangements have been put in place and hundreds of personnel deployed to prevent any untoward incidents. Neighbouring Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland have also beefed up security along their borders fearing an influx from Assam.

The state government has also initiated a mammoth exercise to reach out to the public to explain how they are remedies available to people left out of the final draft. Police have made sectoral plans in all districts, mapping the vulnerable areas.

Apart from this, the state has been divided into zones to be monitored by senior police officers, according to top police officials. The law and order machinery has also been asked to keep an eye out for hate messages on social media platforms.

Those among the state’s 32 million people who have found their names in the list will be relieved but for those left out, it will usher a new struggle to prove their citizenship.

It was decided that anyone residing illegally in the state from March 25, 1971 (as per the Assam Accord) would be kept out of the list. To be included in the list, residents of the state had to apply and submit proof that they or their ancestors were in the 1951 NRC or any subsequent voter list till the cut-off date.

Those residents who have been declared as D-voters (doubtful voters) and termed foreigners by the tribunals and their relatives have not been included in the list. But discrepancies in the process of being declared D-Voters being summoned by foreigners’ tribunals have surfaced recently.

The agitation to drive out foreigners was directed primarily at Bangladeshis. When successive Congress and Asom Gana Parishad governments failed to implement the Assam Accord, voters in Assam placed reins of the state in the hands of Bharatiya Janata Party, for the first time, in 2016.

The party’s aggressive stance on protecting rights of indigenous and assurances of stopping infiltration appealed to most indigenous Assamese. But that optimism dissipated when the same party sought to grant citizenship Bangladeshi Hindus by amending the Citizenship Act.

The exercise could address the issue of foreigners by leaving non-Indians from the list. But there is no clarity on what will happen to those who don’t find their names in the list released on July 30.

Ministers both at the Centre and in the state have made it clear that no one would be declared a foreigner if their names don’t get included. Those applicants will get a chance to take legal recourse by submitting claims, objections and clarifications between August 1 and September 28.

The complete list would be published only after all these claims are settled. There is no deadline yet for that process.

People, whose names have not appeared in the complete list, could end up in detention centres, might get pushed back, become stateless, get long-term work permits without land and political rights.


courtesy: HT