Lakhs out of NRC as states fail to send verified papers

Bijay Sankar Bora

Tribune News Service

Guwahati, August 1

The number of persons left out of the draft National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam would have been much less had the state governments and national agencies sent back documents of 5.7 lakh people who came to the state to work or live.

As per information gathered from the NRC Coordinator office here, 5.7 lakh such documents had been sent to 25 states and Union Territories who had issued certificates to people from those states and UTs who are now residing in Assam after marriage or for employment.

These documents included certificates of birth and education qualification and documents related to electoral process issued by the states of their earlier domicile.

However, only 40 per cent of these verified documents had been sent back to the NRC authority from those states in time for preparation of the draft. Due to the “lukewarm” response from other states, NRC state coordinator Prateek Hajela had moved the Supreme Court in March, seeking directive to these states to return the documents after verification as the NRC coordinator could only wait till May.

Similarly, various other organisations such as banks, UIDAI, CBSE, External Affairs Ministry (Passport), various central government departments had not returned 2.37 lakh documents. “The West Bengal Government happens to be the biggest defaulter in respect of such documents. The state had sent back only 15,000 verified documents out of over 1.5 lakh sent to the state by the NRC coordinator,” a source said.