‘Assam govt targeting NRC authority to hide its failures’

Guwahati: The ruling BJP government pleaded for re-verification of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) which was rejected by the Supreme Court but the standard operating procedure (SOP) for updating the NRC had facilitated sufficient power to check the inclusion of foreigners name in the updating process.

Indicating that state government, which is now critical of NRC, failed to carry out its responsibility, security sources said that the government could have taken effective steps to ensure that names of foreigners are not included in the NRC. Though the process of updating the NRC is monitored by the Supreme Court, the government machinery was used to carry out the job and the standard operating procedure (SOP) for updating the NRC had clearly stated that local registrars of citizen registration (LRCRs) “may cause or direct to cause verification of names already included in the draft NRC, if considered necessary”. The SOP, further said that in such cases, the district registrars of citizen registration (DRCRs) would authorise any officer to carry out a probe.

Sources in the NRC offices said that the government should have taken advantage of that particular clause of the SOP, which was cleared by the Supreme Court to carry out investigations against suspected foreigners as the LRCRs are the circle officers of the government and DRCRs are the deputy commissioners. Informing that whenever name of any person is referred to a Foreigners Tribunal, his or her name is automatically struck off from the NRC. The government should have used its machinery to find out the suspected nationals living in Assam and referred the cases to the FTs, so that names of foreigners could be struck off from the NRC.

But, no such step was taken to intensify the process of identifying the suspected foreigners living in Assam during the process of updating the NRC and in fact, no name was referred to the tribunals in the past one year. According to sources, government was sitting idle for last three years and only in the first week of July, the Central and state governments submitted affidavits in the Supreme Court requesting for 20 per cent re-verification in the bordering districts and 10 per cent in rest of  state.

Referring the allegations of a section of political leaders that names of suspected foreigners were included in the draft NRC, sources said that instead of levelling allegations through the media, they should have filed objections during the process of filing of claims and objections. “Moreover, the political leaders and others should clarify with the officers engaged in the process before coming up with names, who they suspected as foreigners as there have been instances of political leaders coming up with wrong information,” sources added.