Assam NRC: SC orders re-verification of people excluded from list

The Supreme Court on Tuesday sought a report on the ramifications, including advantages and disadvantages, of giving another opportunity to the 40 lakh people who were not included in the final draft of Assam's National Register of Citizens (NRC). The Supreme Court ordered a re-verification of 10 per cent of the people in Assam who were excluded from draft National Register of Citizens (NRC).

A bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi and R F Nariman said the re-verification of those excluded from NRC was a "sample survey" for the satisfaction of the court and its schedule would be decided later. They directed the Assam state co-ordinator Prateek Hajela to submit the report by September 4.

The apex court also deferred the scheduled date of August 30 for receipt of claims and objections to the draft NRC, as it pointed out certain contradictions in the Centre's Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for the filing them. Fixing the next hearing for September 5, the top court made it clear that the report should to be submitted to the court alone.

The first draft of the NRC for Assam was published on the intervening night of December 31 and January 1 in accordance with the top court's direction. Names of 1.9 crore people out of the 3.29 crore applicants were incorporated then. The second draft NRC list was published on July 30 in which out of 3.29 crore people, the names of 2.89 crore were included. The names of 40,70,707 people do not figure in the list. Of these, 37,59,630 names have been rejected and the remaining 2,48,077 are on hold.

Assam, which had faced influx of people from Bangladesh since the early 20th century, is the only state having an NRC which was first prepared in 1951.

On July 31, the apex court had made it clear that there will be no coercive action by authorities against over 40 lakh people, whose names do not figure in the NRC while observing that it was merely a draft.

The court directed Hajela to specify the time required to complete the verification process on the basis of claims and objections from those left out of the draft NRC. It had said that after the publication of the final list of NRC, those people whose names will figure in it will be given usual Aadhaar number as applicable to legal residents in the country.