GUWAHATI, May 13: National Register of Citizens (NRC) Assam coordinator Hitesh Dev Sarma has filed a petition before the Supreme Court, seeking comprehensive and time-bound re-verification of the draft NRC and its supplementary list.
The intervention application filed by the NRC coordinator before the apex court, which is monitoring the NRC update process in Assam, prayed for deletion of illegal voters from the voters list of Assam and sought an update of the NRC, 1951.
In the petition, Sarma also prayed for appropriate direction from the top court for the process to be undertaken under Clause 4 (3) of the Schedule of the Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules 2003.
The NRC coordinator, in his plea, sought re-verification under the supervision of a monitoring committee, preferably represented by a district judge, district magistrate, and superintendent of police.
Citing “glaring anomalies of serious nature” have been noticed in the process which relates to security and integrity of the nation, the plea stated that the office and field verification by which the applications were being verified cannot help in detecting the manipulated or manufactured secondary documents and the same cannot detect if the name was entered fraudulently in the electoral roll.
The reason as stated in the plea was that there had been no back-end verification in the preparation of electoral rolls.
Another issue highlighted in the plea is of some “undeserving persons getting entry in NRC through wrong marking of Originally Inhabitant (OI)”. According to the plea, it has been stated that there is every possibility that some people might not have any valid documents, however, “quite inexplicably” got their entry into NRC through the OI window.
The NRC coordinator, in the plea before the apex court, said since the preparation of a correct and error free NRC was integral to national security and was being closely monitored by the top court itself, it was necessary to apprise the court of anomalies that have occurred during the NRC updation process and seek remedial action.
Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had, after taking oath for top post in the state earlier this week, informed that the state government would seek 20 percent reverification of the list in districts bordering Bangladesh and 10 percent reverification in other districts.
“If the NRC is found to be correct after the reverification, the state government would accept it and take the process forward. But if there are glaring anomalies and faults, even after re-verification, we would want the Supreme Court to look into the matter,” the chief minister said.