‘Millions of Muslims stateless, BJP polarizing Assam through NRC updating process’ Congress

Guwahati: The National register of citizens (NRC) updating process by Centre is reportedly leaving as many as 7 million Muslims with no citizenship and stateless, despite having the relevant documents for citizenship.

The opposition party has now charged the BJP government of using NRC to “polarize Assam on religious lines”, ahead of upcoming Lok Sabha elections by excluding the names of citizens belonging to the religious minority in the NRC,TOI reported.

Assam State Congress president and Rajya Sabha MP Ripun Bora on Monday claimed “intense” interference of the ruling BJP party in the NRC updating process which has now led to the suspicion that people in these religious minority communities will no longer be included in the list leaving them with no citizenship.

“On the one hand, there has been an increase in serving notices as doubtful voters and suspected foreigners to people especially belonging to minority community despite possessing documents of citizenship, on the other we have collected ground reports of NRC officials not doing verification of documents properly. The motive is to exclude as many people from this particular community as possible,” Bora said.

He also added that despite Supreme Court permitting panchayat certificates as linkage documents especially for married women, these NRC officials are not accepting the submitted documents.

“The apex court has laid down clearly set guidelines for updating the NRC, but we have come across anomalies in not following these guidelines at the ground-level by NRC officials. This is being done to polarize the state on religious lines and to benefit the BJP,” the Congress state president said.

Earlier this month, NRC coordinator Prateek Hajela had informed in Apex Court that about 1.5 Lakhs names which were included in the partial draft of the NRC, released on December 31 last year, will be excluded from the final draft and took time to release the final draft by July 30.

The NRC coordinator cited various errors pertaining to the names in the part draft as one of the reasons for dropping the minority names.

Now coming to the rescue of Millions of minority people who have been dropped from the inclusion of NRC, despite having relevant documents, Bora said that the Congress party has decided to fight on there behalf.

“We want a solution to the problem of illegal migrants under Assam Accord, which has laid down March 24, 1971, as the cut-off date. Anyone who entered Assam after the cut-off should not be included in the NRC. But why exclude people who have documents to prove their linkages prior to or up to the cut-off date. Congress will provide all the legal helps to Indian citizens who are not included in the NRC,” Bora added.