Guwahati, Sept 28: The Assam government has reportedly approached the Supreme Court, aiming for a revision of the National Register of Citizens (NRC), asserting that the 2019 NRC was merely "the first phase of the exercise”.
This was informed by Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Saturday on the sidelines of an event in Jharkhand, where he is BJP's co-in-charge ahead of the state’s Assembly polls.
Stressing that the government plans to identify more illegal immigrants, Sarma highlighted that Assam is undergoing a significant “demographic shift” and reiterated his government’s intent to deport identified illegal immigrants back to Bangladesh.
"In Assam, we completed one phase of the NRC exercise, identifying 14 lakh people. We have requested the Supreme Court to allow us another opportunity. If granted, we are confident that we'll be able to identify many more foreigners residing in Assam,” the Chief Minister told the press.
The Chief Minister’s statement has rekindled hopes for a revised NRC in Assam, following the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India’s declaration of the 2019 exercise as “faulty”.
The CAG's report, tabled in the Assam assembly in December 2022, found widespread dscrepancies in the NRC's preparation, notably faulty software. The report also noted that the objective of producing a valid, error-free NRC was "not met". A few days earlier, the Chief Minister had pinned all blame on the then State Coordinator of NRC, Prateek Hajela, a Madhya Pradesh civil service officer.
The NRC, originally compiled in 1951, was updated between 2014 and 2019 to detect illegal immigrants in the state, under Supreme Court supervision. When the final list was released in August 2019, 1.9 million of Assam’s 33 million applicants were found ineligible for Indian citizenship.
The Assam government’s renewed push for an NRC revision comes amidst growing concerns over illegal immigration and the government’s continued claims of a shift in the state’s demography.
