GUWAHATI: Assam Public Works (APW) has welcomed Union Home Minister, Amit Shah’s statement regarding the Central government’s intention to initiate a nationwide exercise to update the National Register of Citizens (NRC) including in Assam too with 1951 as the base year.
It was the APW which had paved the way for updating of the NRC in Assam by filing a case in the Supreme Court. However, the organisation is far from happy with the ‘faulty’ updated NRC in Assam that was published on August 31 this year.
The president of the APW, Abhijit Sarma stated that the organisation hailed Amit Shah’s announcement in Rajya Sabha to update the NRC across the country with 1951 as the base year given that ‘a whooping amount of public money was wasted in updating the NRC in Assam with 1971 as the base year as the final document had lots of flaws’.
The APW has already filed affidavits in the court regarding flaws contained in the updated NRC in Assam. It has alleged that the updated NRC in Assam turned out to be a mechanism to convert a large number of illegal migrants to Indian citizens while a large section of genuine citizens has been left out of it.
It may be mentioned that over 40 lakh applicants out of about 3.30 crore applicants were left out of the final updated NRC in Assam though it was updated under direct supervision of Supreme Court of India.
Meanwhile, opposition Congress, All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) have opposed the Union Home Minister’s statement that will pave way for updating the NRC in Assam anew with 1951 as the base year.
