GUWAHATI: Two sisters who submitted the same document to get their names included in the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam have met with contrasting fates -- one was included but the other was excluded.
This is not an isolated case. There are reports of hundreds of other cases where some members of a family were included but others were not.
After their morning tea on Saturday, Mukul Bose, 51, and her daughter, Mousumi, sat together to check if the names of their family members were included in the NRC. Mukul was praying. She was shocked when Mousumi told her she had been excluded.
While filing for NRC, Mukul had submitted the land document of her father. Her sister, Shefali Baidya, too had submitted this document. Shefali made it to the list but Mukul did not.
“This is an injustice. How can one sister be excluded and the other included based on the same document which they submitted to NRC authorities?” argued Mousumi, who is a post-graduate. “We cannot accept this. We will fight till the end,” she said.
Later in the day, a tense Mukul visited an NRC Seva Kendra hoping to find her name on the list there.
“She wonders how it is possible. She had submitted all her documents establishing her linkage to her father Khagendra Nath Basu. We celebrated her 50th birthday last year with much fanfare. She was born in this country. Sadly, she is now faced with a nationality crisis,” a worried Mousumi lamented.
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The two sisters were born at Bamunpara in Jalpaiguri Road of West Bengal. They came to Assam following their marriage. Mukul was married in Guwahati and Shefali in Lower Assam’s Bongaigaon.
Shefali, her husband Manoranjan Baidya and their only son Manojit Baidya had made it to the first draft of the NRC published on December 31, 2017.
In Mukul’s family, except her, the names of her husband Mrinal Kanti Bose, son Mrityunjay and Mousumi were included. None of them had their names on the previous two lists.
“Earlier, we were summoned twice by the NRC authorities for the re-verification of our documents. We went with the documents and they said we had everything needed and there was no reason to be worried. I am now shocked,” Mukul said.