GUWAHATI: Union Home Secretary, Rajiv Gauba on Friday chaired a series of high-level meeting here to take stock of the measures taken by Assam government and its law enforcing agencies to deal with the situation that may arise post publication of draft of the updated National Register of Citizens (NRC) besides gathering the first hand information about the internal security scenario in the insurgency affected state.
The first draft of the updated NRC is expected to publish on or before December 31 next as per the directive of the Supreme Court which has been monitoring the entire process of updating of the NRC.
The Home Secretary first met the chief minister and home minister Sarbananda Sonowal before chairing meeting with senior Assam government officials and police officials including the chief secretary, state home secretary, the DGP and state police intelligence chief besides the state coordinator of NRC updating process, Protik Hajela. Registrar General of India (RGI), Sailesh was also present in the meeting on review
The Home Secretary also chaired a meeting of the strategic group of the counter-insurgency Unified Command Comprising Army, Assam Police and paramilitary forces to take stock of the internal security scenario in view of NRC updating process. The GOC 4 Corps and the GOC 3 Corps of Indian army were present in the meeting.
“The internal security scenario has been on an improving trend in Assam and the entire for the last few years and I have been assured in the meeting that the trend will continue despite the minor hiccups like a few hit and run incidents and other criminal acts by the insurgent groups,” Gauba said
Regarding the process of updating of the NRC in Assam, the Home Secretary said,” The updating of the NRC is a massive exercise that has been undertaken by the RGI through mobilization of the entire state machinery. It involves a population of 3.28 crore, 68 lakh application and verification of over six crore documents. Everybody is working in tandem while the Supreme Court is monitoring.”
“I would like to emphasize that only the first draft of the NRC will be published before December 31 and there should not be any worry in case somebody’s name doesn’t appear in it. There will subsequent reverification of the document and publication of the second draft. After that there will be process of clarification and entertaining objection before the final draft is published,” he assured in an attempt to allay apprehension that may be playing I the minds of certain sections in the state over the NRC process. He requested the media to emphasize on these points too.
The NRC in Assam is being updated taking March 25, 1971 as the cut-off date as per the tripartite agreement signed among the Centre, State Government and All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) way back on May 5, 2005. It is expected that after updating the NRC, it will become easier to detect illegal Bangladeshi migrants in Assam who had sneaked into the stare after March 25, 1971 as per Assam Acord signed on August 15, 1985 as culmination of Assam Agitation against illegal migrants in the state.
Given that the publication of the draft updated NRC may create a sensitive situation in the troubled-prone state, Assam government as per the instruction of the Centre has put its police force on high alert so that vested quarters could be prevented from creating any law and order problem in the state to derail the process of updating the NRC. The state government as well as the Centre have assured that no genuine India citizens would be kept out of the updated NRC and in case name of any Indian citizen remaining out of the updated NRC draft, those would be given a chance to provide additional documents as proof of their citizenship.