‘Don’t worry, you won’t be detained,’ Home Ministry to 19 lakh left out of NRC

New Delhi: The Union Home Ministry has assured that the 19 lakh people left out of the citizenship list would not be detained till all remedies have been exhausted.

Talking about the options available for those excluded, the ministry said they need to appeal to Foreigners Tribunal within 120 days from August 31. The ministry further informed that to facilitate appeal, 200 new tribunals would be made functional from Monday, in addition to the 100 already existing ones.

The home ministry also said the state government has made arrangements to provide legal aid to the needy by the district legal services.

A total of 3,30,27,661 people had applied to be included in the National Register of Citizens. Of them, 3,11,21,004 have been included in the document and 19,06,657 excluded.

The list, second since 1951, is an exercise to identify legal citizens of India and weed out illegal immigrants from Assam.

The final NRC was published on  http://www.nrcassam.nic.in at 10 am and the hard copies of the Supplementary List of Inclusions were made available for public viewing at the NRC Seva Kendras (NSK) and Circle Offices on Saturday.

In anticipation of public unrest, security was tightened and large assemblies and use of loudspeakers were banned.

An additional 20,000 paramilitary forces were also sent to Assam by the Centre.

Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure was imposed in several parts of the state ahead of the release of the final draft of the NRC.

The first draft list (Assam) was released last year, leaving out over 40 lakh people who were told to prove their citizenship.

The National Register of Citizens (NRC) was first published in Assam in 1951 and has been updated since 2015 as per the directions of the Supreme Court in an attempt to deport illegal migrants from Bangladesh after March 25, 1971.