GUWAHATI: The Garo National Council (GNC), Kamrup district unit has embarked on a campaign across the Garo-dominated villages along the Assam-Meghalaya border to make people excluded from the National Register of Citizens (NRC) aware of the process of appeals in foreigners’ tribunals.
The first such awareness meeting in this regard was organised by GNC at Hahim on Wednesday followed by the second at Ukiam under Chaygaon constituency in Kamrup district on Thursday.
“According to rough estimates, the names of about 500 Garo border villagers in Kamrup district have been excluded from the final NRC list,” GNC Kamrup district president, Anindro Marak, told The Shillong Times on Thursday.
Over 19lakh people in Assam have been left out of the NRC final list released on August 31 this year and a time period of 120 days have been fixed for them to appeal in foreigners’ tribunals for their inclusion after they get their certified copies of the order from the authorities.
“The objective of the drive is to guide people who have not been able to check whether their names have been included in the final list. Besides, many have not applied for inclusion in the NRC. So we have alerted them that they might have to confront legal issues in the event of an inquiry regarding NRC in future,” Marak said.
The meeting at Ukiam on Thursday was attended by over 100 representatives from 14 villages of the area and other Garo organisations.
The GNC leader also appealed to the left-out Garo villagers to make use of the time period for appeals in foreigners’ tribunals appropriately.
“The awareness programme has been scheduled across four venues along the Assam-Meghalay border. Tomorrow, we will have another meeting in the Santipur area. We hope the authorities are considerate about the limitations in regard to infrastructure and communication in the border villages and help facilitate the excluded people to include them in the final list,” he said.
According to Berington Marak of Umthli village, about 8km from Ukiam, many Garo villagers who had applied for NRC inclusion are totally in the dark about the outcome owing to lack of Internet or telephone network. “The nearest NRC Seva Kendra (NSK) is as far as 30km away and communication is also a problem,” he said.