Assam Anti-CAA Committee Calls for Release of Final NRC Draft

GUWAHATI: The Coordination Committee against the Citizenship Amendment Act in Assam has sought to get the final draft of the National Register of Citizens (NRC), published by the Registrar General of India (RGI).

It has been stated in a letter that after the Supreme Court had ordered and overseen the updating of the original 1951 NRC, the final draft was submitted to the RGI on August 31, 2019.

The committee letter expressed disappointment that the final draft of the NRC was never published, and that rejection slips were not issued to those excluded from it. The committee attributed this to objections reportedly filed by certain organizations, including the state government, which had appealed to the Supreme Court for a re-verification in specific areas—an appeal that the Court ultimately rejected.

The committee argued that nothing warranted the unpublished updating of the NRC and urged the RGI to publish it further without delay. They thought that its release would be well in the interest of the populace except for those who would have political reasons to turn against it.

The committee separately wrote a letter to the Chief Justice of India expressing gratitude from the people of Assam to the Supreme Court decision upholding Clause 6(A) of the Citizenship Act, 1955, saying that it had finally settled the issue.

This decision would meet the rightful demands of the Indigenous population of Assam and would help to ease long-standing public disputes that had disrupted peace, the committee stated. Still, they expressed disappointment that "despite submitting the final NRC draft to the Registrar General of India (RGI), no effective steps had been taken to put it into action".

The Supreme Court also further strengthened Section 6A of the Citizenship Act by declaring that immigrants would be granted Indian citizenship as of the 1971 cut-off date, which also aligns with the Assam Accord of 1985. The Assam Accord was between the Rajiv Gandhi government and the All Assam Students' Union after the six-year Assam Agitation declared that all illegal immigrants, regardless of religion, who entered Assam after March 25, 1971, must be identified and deported.

The NRC update process took nearly six years to complete, at a cost of nearly Rs 1,600 crore. Of the total 3.3 crore applicants, over 19.06 lakh people have been excluded from the NRC, but they haven't been allowed to challenge their exclusion in foreign' tribunals yet.

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