NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday extended the deadline for publication of the final draft of Assam’s National Register of Citizens (NRC) till July 30. The NRC is being prepared to identify illegal migrants in Assam.
A Bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi and R F Nariman considered the report of state NRC coordinator Prateek Hajela and extended the deadline. Hajela had approached the Suprme Court last week stating that it would not be possible to release the final draft of the NRC as scheduled on June 30 due to the floods in Cachar, Karimganj and Hailakandi districts in the Barak Valley as well as in parts of Karbi Anglong and Hojai.
The Bench asked the Chief Secretary and DGP of Assam to immediately provide adequate security to Hajela and his family members, including his children, in view of the work done by him.
The SC said it will consider all the interlocutory applications and other related matters on July 31.
The first draft of the NRC, which was released in January, listed only 1.9 crore people as citizens out of the 3.9 crore people who had filed the NRC application.
The updated NRC will count only those as Assam citizens who can prove their residency on or before March 21, 1971. This means that all those not included in the list run the risk of being rendered illegal immigrants.
All those whose names are not there in the draft NRC will get another chance at explaining to the NRC authorities.
Assam, which has faced influx of people from Bangladesh for over many years now, is the only state having an NRC.
Why the NRC is being updated in Assam?
NRC updation basically means the process of enlisting the names of those persons (or their descendants) whose names appear in any of the Electoral Rolls up to 1971, 1951 NRC or any of the admissible documents stipulated.
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