Congress, BJP question NRC accuracy

Guwahati: Amidst the speculation of state government exploring legislative options to deal with the wrongful inclusion or deletion of names in the National Register of Citizens (NRC), the political debate has intensified in Assam with both — ruling BJP and Opposition Congress — questioning the accuracy of the list prepared by the NRC authorities under the supervision of the Supreme Court.

The three-time chief minister and veteran Congress leader Tarun Gogoi, who claims to have played a key role in starting the process of updating the NRC, said that Assam will not get an error-free NRC on August 31.

“The NRC which will come out on August 31, I suspect, won’t be correct. It will just be wastepaper,” he said. Bogged down by SC’s rejection of their plea for sample re-verification to find out wrongful inclusions of names, Assam chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal who met Union home minister Amit Shah in New Delhi on Monday indicated that the government may explore legislative options to deal with the wrongful inclusion of some names in the NRC after its final publication.

He, however, asserted that his government would ensure peaceful publication of the NRC on August 31 as mandated by the SC.

“In a democracy, everyone has the right to ask questions. After the publication of NRC, if necessary in future, we will take whatever steps will be required,” said Mr Sonowal.

Meanwhile, the MHA on Tuesday said that “non-inclusion of a person’s name in the NRC does not by itself amount to him or her being declared as a foreigner” as they would be given adequate opportunity to present their case before the Foreigners Tribunals (FTs). The time limit to appeal before the FTs is also being increased from 60 to 120 days.

The ministry in its statement said, “It was decided that in order to facilitate the persons excluded from the NRC, adequate arrangements will be made by the state government to provide full opportunity to appeal against their non-inclusion.