Women from state left out of Assam NRC
SHILLONG: Phulbari MLA SG Esmatur Momin while expressing concern over the non-inclusion of several women from Meghalaya in the final NRC has asked Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma to urge the Assam government to set up a foreigners’ tribunal only for the applicants from the state.
With over a thousand tribal and non-tribal Meghalaya women married in Assam excluded from the final National Register of Citizens (NRC), Mominin said that Meghalaya government should provide help to these women by deputing special officers and legal experts.
In a letter to the chief minister on Monday, Mominin suggested that the state government should also ask the Assam government to submit the list of the Meghalaya women who submitted the NRC documents verified by the state government and let them withdraw their names so that Meghalaya can update their names when the NRC exercise will be taken up in the state.
Mominin suggested that Meghalaya government can also file an affidavit in the Supreme Court as NRC is being updated under its supervision to grant a special hearing for these women from Meghalaya and give specific directives to NRC authority to include their names based on the documents issued and verified by Meghalaya government.
Lamenting that these bonafide citizens who were born and brought up in Meghalaya but married in Assam are overnight deemed as stateless people despite submitting all the documents verified by the Meghalaya government, he added that there are high possibilities that these women would be declared as foreigners and sent to detention camps.
Meanwhile, the Anti-Corruption and Human Development Organisation (ACHDO) has expressed concern over the matter and has urged the government to take necessary action.
