Assam NRC coordinator writes letter seeking details of "Ineligible Persons" in final list

GUWAHATI: Assam NRC coordinator Hitesh Dev Sarma wrote a letter to all Deputy Commissioner (DC) and District Registrar of Citizen Registration (DRCR) seeking details of ineligible persons from the final NRC list.

"With respect to the subject cited above and the correspondences under reference, it has come to the knowledge of the undersigned that after publication of final NRC on 31st August 2019, few names of ineligible persons are found present in the final NRC, particularly who are DV, DF, PFT, DVD, DFD, PFTD," the letter dated February 19 reads.

" As such, you are requested to share the details of such persons who are ineligible for inclusion in NRC but whose names got included in NRC in addition to the list shared earlier…," it said.

Around 1.9 million people being left out in Assam where the NRC exercise was concluded on August 31 last year. According to a survey conducted by the Rights & Risks Analysis Group (RRAG), those who have been left out from the NRC list in Assam spent a total of Rs 7,836 crore in appeals and hearings. The NRC exercise carried out under the supervision of the Supreme Court aims to identify foreigners who entered the state after 24th of March 1971. This is in keeping with Assam Accord that was agreed upon by the Centre and state bodies.

Meanwhile, the UN and other international rights groups have expressed concern that many could be rendered stateless.

The citizenship list is part of a drive to detect illegal immigrants in Assam.

The Indian government claims that the migrants have arrived from neighbouring Muslim-majority Bangladesh.

It is worth mentioning that, just a few days ago, the NRC final list published on ”www.nrcassam.nic.in” had gone offline. The Union Home Ministry assured that the data was safe and cited “some technical issue in visibility on cloud.” The Ministry also said that the issue will be resolved soon.

According to officials, the data vanished as the service period of the cloud storage provided by IT firm Wipro had expired. The renewal of the subscription could not be done as there was no coordinator available post the transfer of former coordinator Prateek Hajela.

Officials also said that discontinuation of Wipro which was earlier authorized to look after all IT-related works in the NRC update exercise had caused this issue.

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