Assam government announces crackdown on Aadhar cardholders who did not apply for NRC
GUWAHATI: The Assam government on Sunday announced a crackdown on Aadhar cardholders who did not apply to get their names included in the National Register of Citizens (NRC).
Talking to mediapersons during his panchayat poll campaign on Sunday, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said, “We will launch a major drive within the next two to four days against those who obtained Aadhar cards and are living in Assam but did not apply for the NRC.”
He said the state government has already stopped issuing Aadhaar cards to those who did not apply for the NRC. “However, before we took this step, many had obtained Aadhar cards in Assam without applying for the NRC,” he said.
The Chief Minister also said that the state government had prepared an action plan to detect and drive out the illegal immigrants who entered Assam over the past few years.
In September last year, Sarma stated that four Assam districts had more Aadhar cardholders than their projected population. The four districts are Barpeta, Dhubri (both in lower Assam), Morigaon and Nagaon (both in central Assam). Dhubri shares a border with Bangladesh.
“We found that 103.74 per cent of people were issued Aadhar cards in Barpeta, 103.48 per cent in Dhubri, 101.74 per cent in Morigaon and 100.68 per cent in Nagaon. Definitely, suspected immigrants managed to take Aadhar,” Sarma said.
Later in December, the government announced that all applications for Aadhar will be rejected if the applicant or the family had not applied for the NRC.
The NRC of 1951 was updated in Assam in deference to the Assam Accord of 1985 and with the cut-off date of March 24, 1971.
Over 19.06 lakh of the 3.3 crore applicants were left out of the NRC’s complete draft, which was published in August 2019.
Meanwhile, three more persons were arrested in Assam for alleged anti-India remarks in connection with the Pahalgam terror attack, taking the total number of such arrests to 16. The arrested trio were identified as Dadhichi Dimple alias Dimple Bora, Tahib Ali and Bimal Mahato.