GUWAHATI: The National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam is in the eye of a storm for the inclusion of the name of a person, who was declared an illegal Bangladeshi immigrant by a foreigners’ tribunal of Sivasagar in 2011 as well as the Gauhati High Court.
The matter came to light after Ali Ahmed filed a review petition in the Gauhati HC submitting that he cannot be an illegal immigrant as his name figured in the updated NRC, the first draft of which was published on December 31.
The NRC authorities blamed the border police for the mistake. “We had collected names of all declared foreigners from the office of the director general of border police. Here, we found one Ali Ahmed, son of Abdul Basir, whose address was shown as Sonari in the then Sivasagar district.
“While updating the NRC, we searched for all Ali Ahmeds in Sivasagar. When we went through the review petition filed in the HC, it said he was a resident of Lahorighat and he went to Sivasagar in 2010 and was put on the foreigners’ tribunal list there,” NRC state coordinator Prateek Hajela told TNIE.
He said according to data received from border police, Ali Ahmed is a resident of Sonari and NRC officials searched for him there.
“I cannot search for that person in any other place because there are thousands of Ali Ahmeds. Moreover, the person had applied as Ali Ahmed, son of Basir Uddin. However, as per border police data Ali Ahmed is the son of Abdul Basir. In the HC, he wrote his name as Ali Ahmed, son of Abdul Basir. We don’t have pictures. There are 4,259 declared foreigners whom we could identify from among the NRC applicants and we prevented their names from coming into the NRC draft. Then, there are 63,000 “D” or doubtful voters who we prevented from getting into NRC. So, unless we have the correct address, the name match will not work,” Hajela said.
The incident left groups and organisations, insisting on the publication of a correct NRC, livid.“It is a matter of grave concern. We all were hoping that it would be an NRC devoid of the names of illegal immigrants. After this incident, people will now suspect that names of foreigners might get included in the draft NRC,” said Lurinjyoti Gogoi, general secretary of All Assam Students’ Union.
BJP MLA, Shiladitya Deb, alleged that the names of illegal Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants were being included in the NRC.
Facts behind NRC exercise
More than 3 crore people have submitted documents to Assam govt to prove their Indian citizenship
These people submitted papers and documents to prove their ancestors resided in Assam before 1971
The aim was to identify and segregate illegal Bangladeshi migrants, but it is loaded with political implication