The Supreme Court on Tuesday extended the deadline for final publication of National Register of Citizen (NRC) for Assam by a month to August 31. Earlier, the top court had fixed July 31 for publication of the final NRC. Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi rejected a plea by the Centre and Assam government seeking 20 per cent sample re-verification of names included in the final NRC draft in the districts bordering Bangladesh. The court said that the report by state coordinator Prateek Hajela suggests that 27 per cent re-verification has already been carried out in the process of adjudication of fresh objections and claims.
The final NRC draft had left out 40 lakh applicants. After subsequent verification, another 1 lakh who were among the 2.89 crore included in the draft, were left out. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, while representing the state, last week told the apex court that Hajela’s report shows that nearly 80 lakh names could have been re-verified automatically while hearing objections and claims based on the family tree approach. “This could be even more than the 20 percent re-verification that was being sought for,” the CJI said to Mehta.
The senior lawyer, while urging the top court to allow sample re-verification, pointed out that perception is growing in Assam that there are inclusions and exclusions, which is not right. He added that the “exclusions are more”, which is mostly happening in the border districts, apparently due to local reasons.
Hajela, in the meantime, sought more time to publish the final NRC. He said that the ongoing flood situation in Assam was causing some difficulties. He further said that NRC officials would require some time to write the final orders. He also said that while a supplementary list of additional inclusions and exclusions will be published by the end of this month, another month was needed to publish the final NRC.
Meanwhile, Hajela, has rejected reports of inclusion of a Rohingya migrant in the draft NRC as ‘false’ and ‘baseless’. There were reports on inclusion of a Rohingya migrant in the draft NRC in some dailies.