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Silchar: State Coordinator of National Register of Citizens (NRC), Assam, Hitesh Dev Sharma has requested members of foreigners tribunals across the state not to consider draft NRC and supplementary list as reliable evidence for disposal of cases under judicial or quasi-judicial process.
Dev Sharma, in a letter issued on April 18, said there are errors in the NRC list published earlier due to wrong data entry in the process of updation.
“Final NRC is yet to be published by the Registrar General of Citizens Registration which is mandatory as per cause 7 of the Schedule of the Citizenship Rules, 2003. Before that there is possibility reverification of names considering the errors. Results of the Draft NRC and Supplementary list may change when Final NRC gets published,” he wrote in the letters.
Dev Sharma said it has been observed that while disposing cases in FTs, various documents relating to NRC are being called from the district registrar of citizen registration (deputy commissioner) and state coordinator of NRC.
“You are requested not to rely on the NRC draft and supplementary list published so far till the Final NRC is published by the Registrar General of India of Citizens Registration,” he wrote to the judges.
The NRC, first prepared only for Assam in 1951, was updated since 2015 following directions from the Supreme Court. The complete draft of NRC released in July, 2018 had left out 4 million of the 33 million applicants. An additional list released in June, 2019, had excluded 100,000 more taking the total tally to 4.1 million.
The final NRC list released in August,2019 included 2.2 million of those left out from the earlier lists, but kept out 1.9 million. The list is yet to be notified by the Registrar General of India and almost all parties and organisations in Assam, including the state government, has termed it as faulty for leaving out genuine applicants and including illegal immigrants.
Several suits are at present pending in Supreme Court seeking a partial or complete review of the list. The Assam government has also filed a petition in this regard in the apex court.
According to home and political department of Assam, there are 100 Foreigners Tribunal functioning in the state. Initially, 11 Illegal Migrant Determination Tribunals (IMDT) were functioning. After the repeal of IMDT Act in 2005, the government of Assam established 21 new FTs. In 2009, four more FTs were established while in 2014, additional 64 FTs were included for disposal of pending cases.
Judges and advocates were appointed as the members of FT under the Foreigners Tribunal Act, 1941 and Foreigners Tribunal ORDER 1964 as per the guidelines issued by central government.
“I had to write this letter to all the FTs because in several cases, they called for NRC documents. Till the Final NRC comes, it should not be referred by courts in judicial process,” Dev Sharma told HT.
About not issuing the Aadhaar Card to 2.7 million NRC applicants whose biometric were locked during claims and objection process, Dev Sharma said that Supreme Court approved the standard operating procedure (SOP) proposed by his predecessor Prateek Hajela.
“Aadhaar is not related to citizens rather for the residents, to avail them various facilities. Supreme Court approved SOP framed by Prateek Hajela. Now I have suggested the state government to appeal to SC for unlocking the names,” he said.
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