Delhi & Dispur responsible to derail NRC process to impose CAA: AASU

STAFF REPORTER

GUWAHATI: The All Assam Students' Union (AASU) has accused the present regimes at the Centre and the State of hatching a conspiracy to derail the NRC (National Register of Citizens) process to impose the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).

In statement issued on Monday on the occasion of completion of one year of publication of the final updated NRC, the AASU alleged that the ruling BJP had conspired to derail the NRC process by keeping an eye on vote-bank politics. The students' organization further said that the ruling regime at the Centre wanted to impose the CAA.

"There were several instances when the governments in Delhi and Dispur tried to create administrative bottlenecks on the publication of the final NRC," the statement issued by the AASU president Dipanko Kumar Nath said. He added that even after the completion of a year since the final updated NRC was published, the issue still remains uncertain.

AASU general secretary Lurinjyoti Gogoi said that even though the final NRC was published after a monitoring mechanism had been put in place by the Supreme Court, the people of Assam have not got any positive outcome of the historic document due to failures of the Centre and the State Government to do their jobs.

Clarifying that the AASU has not rejected the final NRC, chief advisor of AASU Dr Samujjal Bhattacharjya said that the students' organization had filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking remedial measures to address some loopholes in the citizenships' document. He added that the figures of exclusion in the final NRC could not satisfy the AASU. "We approached the SC seeking remedial measures. We have full faith in the SC," said Dr Bhattacharjya.

On August 31 in 2019, the people of Assam got the final NRC — an updated version of the 1951 NRC — after 34 years of signing the historic Assam Accord. In the process, while 3,11,21,004 people were found eligible for inclusion, 19,06,657 were found ineligible for inclusion in the NRC. Altogether 3,30,27,661 people, through 68,37,660 applications, had applied for inclusion of their names in the updated NRC.

But the gigantic NRC process that involved a large of human resources and crores of money to detect illegal Bangladeshis living in the State, has not moved forward much during the last one year.

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