GUWAHATI: For a gargantuan exercise spanning over four years and another decade before that, when a consensus for an update of the 1951 National Register of Citizens was arrived at, August 31, 2019 – the date of its completion – should have been a red letter day for Assam in particular.
However, it appears that the publication of the NRC final list on Saturday morning has been reduced to an “anti-climax” of sorts, with reservations and doubts about the Supreme Court-monitored drill galore from many quarters, including representatives from the ruling party and the Opposition.
To start with, the All Assam Students Union (AASU) and Assam Public Works (APW), the primary petitioner in the Supreme Court, which led to the update process of the National Register of Citizens in 2013, have out rightly expressed their displeasure over the outcome.
“This is a flawed document as five of our submissions for re-verification of the draft NRC were rejected by the apex court. There has been no audit by any information technology expert and we doubt whether the software used for the exercise was capable of handling so much data,” APW president, Aabhijeet Sharma told the media after publication of the citizens register.
“Political and non-political institutions and organisations, which have relentlessly worked hard to protect ‘foreigners,’ have been successful today,” Sharma said.
AASU, meanwhile, has pledged to move the Supreme Court over the exclusions from the final NRC list, which it said was nowhere close to the figures of the illegal immigrants put up by the government from time to time.
In a statement, the students’ organisation, which was part of the tripartite meeting with the Centre and state government held 14 years back to develop a consensus on the NRC update, felt that “some loopholes remain in the final list, which is why it has not emerged as a complete register of citizens.”
“In order to rectify the loopholes, we will make our submissions before the Supreme Court and we have faith that the apex court will take the requisite measures in this regard. Here, we would also like to point out that the central and state governments have failed to take the opportunity of a Supreme Court-monitored exercise for a ‘foreigner-free’ NRC,” the students union said.
AASU further alleged that the government did precious little to put forth its case against ‘foreigners’ be it through inquiries under the provision of law or objections or producing them before tribunals during the update process.
The Bharatiya Gorkha Parisangha too has expressed its reservations, saying that the NRC “is not in expected lines for the people of Assam” and that “over one lakh Gorkhas have been excluded. The Parisangha said that many descendants of freedom fighters and martryrs too have been excluded.
On the other hand, the All Assam Minority Students Union (AAMSU), while being non-committal on the outcome, has said it would take legal recourse for those persons which had submitted legal documents but are now featuring among the 19-odd lakh who have been excluded from the final list.
“We are not reading too much into the exclusions figure. But we have preliminary information from some districts that many religious and linguistic minority people have been excluded,” AAMSU advisor, Azizur Rahman said.
Leaders from the ruling party as well as the Opposition in the state have apparently voiced their reservations against the citizen’s register with some calling it a document that would sound the “death knell for indigenous citizens”, while others calling it a document facilitating “grant of land patta” for “foreigners”.
Assam minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma said that he is unhappy with the process, alleging that NRC “cannot be a document for the indigenous people”. “In fact, we had lost hope in the draft NRC last year when the rate of exclusions in the border districts of the state was the lowest,” he said.
It may be mentioned that both political parties once took credit for getting the NRC update exercise going.
Meanwhile, the Forum Against Citizenship Act Amendment Bill (FACAAB), which comprises several eminent scholars, activists and leading personalities from varied fields, has termed the NRC publication as a historic moment as it was for the first time that such a legal process towards solution of problems of illegal influx in the state has progressed.
The forum appealed to people not to give indulgence to “political circles” and sections for making statements that might spark frenzy and disrupt peace.
“At a time when progressive and democratic minds have been over the decades demanding an error-free and unbiased citizens register, there are sections have resorted to negative publicity which can at best sow the seeds of communal tension,” the forum said in a statement.