GUWAHATI: The Assam government on Thursday decided against issuing Aadhaar cards to adults, except for individuals from the Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST) and tea garden communities. The decision was made at a meeting of the state cabinet, chaired by Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma.
"The state cabinet has approved the notification/implementation of revised standard operating procedure for Aadhaar enrollment of citizens above 18 years to curb possible fraudulent Aadhaar enrollment of any infiltrators," a government statement said. The government authorised District Commissioners to issue Aadhaar cards to citizens above 18 years of age in rarest of rare cases.
According to the statement, "This restriction shall not apply for one year to individuals from SC, ST, and tea garden communities. Aadhaar enrollment of left-out individuals from these groups will be completed within one year." Sarma said people from SC, ST, and tea garden communities had not reached saturation.
He said the government decided on the curbs to thwart fraudulent Aadhar enrollment. "For the past year, we have been continuously apprehending illegal Bangladeshi migrants along the international border. We pushed back seven of them yesterday. We are not sure if we could nab all of them, so we want to take some kind of protection to prevent infiltrators from becoming Indian citizens with Aadhaar," he said.
In April, the Assam government had announced a crackdown on Aadhaar cardholders who did not apply to get their names included in the National Register of Citizens (NRC). Sarma had then stated that the government stopped issuing Aadhar to those who did not apply for NRC.
In September last year, he said that four districts – Barpeta, Dhubri, Morigaon and Nagaon – had more Aadhar cardholders than their projected population.
Meanwhile, the Assam and Nagaland governments will jointly plant trees at Uriamghat to make it green again. In one of the biggest eviction drives in Assam in recent years, 12,000 bighas of land were cleared of encroachment at Uriamghat, which falls in Assam's Golaghat district and is located near the Nagaland border.
"The eviction operation in Uriamghat will be termed as Joint Eviction Operation between the Governments of Assam and Nagaland, and the evicted areas will be jointly planted by both Govts," Sarma posted on X after the cabinet meeting.
The Assam government's decision to involve Nagaland in the effort assumes significance in the light of the claims made by a section of Nagaland villagers that it is their "ancestral land." As a stakeholder, Nagaland is expected to work for the land’s protection.