NRC: Unhappy Assam students' body to move Supreme Court over 'less' number of foreigners detected

The AASU is a signatory to the Assam Accord, a 1985 document that provided for "detection, deletion and deportation" of illegal foreigners from Assam.

Security personnel patrol a road ahead of publication of the final draft of the National Register of Citizens NRC at Buraburi in Morigaon Saturday August 31 2019. | PTI

GUWAHATI: Anguished that the number of the illegal immigrants in Assam detected during the process of updation of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) is much less than what was perceived, the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) has decided to move the Supreme Court to get relief.

“We are not happy. We thought there are errors in the NRC. All these years we had fought demanding an immigrant-free NRC. We haven’t got it,” AASU general secretary Lurinjyoti Gogoi told this newspaper.

“We will soon move the Supreme Court seeking relief,” he said.

The AASU had spearheaded the six-year-long bloody anti-immigrants’ movement of early 1980s which led to the signing of the historic Assam Accord by the Rajiv Gandhi government in 1985. The NRC was updated in deference to the accord where it was committed that the immigrants, irrespective of their faith who entered Assam after March 24 (midnight), 1971, will be detected and deported.

“The figures of the immigrants given earlier by (former Assam Chief Minister) Hiteswar, Saikia, (former Union Minister) Sriprakash Jaiswal, former Assam Governor Lt Gen (retired) SK Sinha and Union Minister Kiren Rijiju were much higher,” Gogoi said.

He alleged no government tried to find out a political solution to the problem after the Assam Accord was signed. 

“Our last hope was and will be the Supreme Court. For the first time, a process had begun to identify the foreigners. We haven’t got a correct NRC. The NRC has frustrated us,” he said.

The Assam Public Works (APW), which is an NGO that first filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking the updation of the NRC, also said that the number of the excluded should have been more.

“We thought we haven’t got a correct NRC. We demand a third-party audit and quality check of the entire NRC work,” APW president Abhijeet Sarma said.

He said they would approach the President, Prime Minister, Home Minister and the Supreme Court seeking the re-verification of the documents of the applicants.