GUWAHATI: Former Assam chief minister, Prafulla Kumar Mahanta said that all efforts should be made to prepare an error-free National Register of Citizens (NRC) even as he exhorted other states to follow suit and come out with a similar register that protects genuine Indians.
Speaking to reporters here on Tuesday, Mahanta said, “The people of Assam need a clean and error-free NRC which is expected to be out by December 31 this year. No names of foreigners should find place in the register and likewise no names of genuine Indian citizens should be excluded.”
He further said that there might be errors in the legacy data provided by sections among the 40, 07707 people excluded in the complete draft which could be rectified prior to the publication of the final NRC.
Thanking the Supreme Court for its monitoring of the NRC update process since 2013, Mahanta, one of the three signatories of the historic Assam Accord in 1985, said, “It is because of the clear concept of the judges and the initiative taken by conscious citizens such as Pradip Bhuyan, Banti Bhuyan and Assam Public Works (an NGO), and AASU that the process has moved on and that today we have the complete draft.”
The former chief minister also thanked the NRC coordinator and the officials and employees involved in the update process.
“I also urge other states to take Assam as a role model and come out with a register that protects indigenous people. Citizens of all states should have voter identity cards,” Mahanta said.
It may be noted that Meghalaya has sounded an alert against possible infiltration from Assam in the wake of the NRC draft publication on Monday, while Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur has intensified measures to prevent influx.
On Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s stinging criticism against the exclusion of over 40lakh people in the complete NRC draft, Mahanta said that the TMC chief might have made the remark for “her political gain”. “Let me again remind you that this update process is not against Bengalis, Hindus or Muslims but against those migrants who have entered Assam after March 24, 1971,” he added.
Reiterating his opposition to the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016, the chief adviser of the Asom Andolan Sangrami Mancha, said that the Bill, which is in conflict with the Assam Accord, if passed would be detrimental to the interests of the indigenous people as Assam would bear the maximum brunt of illegal migrants, especially Hindu migrants from Bangladesh.
The former chief minister also said that the population in Assam had increased by over 50 per cent during 1911 and 1961and much of it has to do with the entry of people in the state (then comprising the current seven states) from erstwhile East Pakistan and Bangladesh.