Unhappy with the number of people excluded, the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) has decided to challenge the findings of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in the Supreme Court, which had monitored the exercise.
The AASU, which spearheaded the anti-foreigners Assam Agitation four decades ago, first demanded an updated NRC in 1980. It was a signatory to the agitation-ending Assam Accord of August 1985 that sought “detection, deletion (from voters’ list) and deportation” of illegal migrants from the State.
“The figure of 19 lakh NRC-rejects is not what we expected, given the history of large-scale influx into Assam. This NRC has turned out to be incomplete and error-prone. We will appeal to the Supreme Court to remove the faults and discrepancies,” AASU general secretary Lurinjyoti Gogoi said.
NGO Assam Public Works, whose petition in the Supreme Court in July 2009 led to the start of the NRC exercise four years later, also criticised the findings. It said it would move the apex court again besides writing to the President of India, the Prime Minister and Union Home Minister for rechecking the final NRC figures.
“We had fought for removing foreigners from Assam, not for their ‘Indianisation’ which is what the NRC has done. For more than a year, we have been telling the Supreme Court for 100% reverification of documents but the NRC State Coordinator’s claim of 27% sample reverification was accepted,” the NGO chief, Aabhijeet Sarma, said.
“The NRC authority found 5,464 ‘Bangladeshis’ after 29% reverification in Cachar district, 4,096 in Dhubri district after 38% reverification, and 3,980 in Karimganj district after 25% reverification. If these many were detected, imagine how many would have been identified after 100% reverification,” he said.
“We will leave no stone unturned for a quality check and a total reverification of the NRC documents. We will also demand an audit of the Rs. 1,600 crore spent on the update exercise,” he added.
