People coerced to move at very short notice for flawed NRC exercise in Assam: Congress

A delegation team of Assam Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) led by Rajya Sabha MP and APCC president Ripun Bora on Friday met NRC state coordinator Prateek Hajela and submitted a memorandum for checking harassment meted out to the citizens of Assam in the name of verification of documents for preparation of NRC.

In the memorandum, the APCC said that, the entire exercise it seems is executed in haste with no concrete plan to execute the same smoothly.

“There seems to be a never ending issuance of notices and circulars to the various districts for citizens to appear in remote corners of the state for verification of their documents. They are not even allowed travelling allowance even though it is only with the co-operation of the citizens, the entire NRC process where people called upon to appear personally are remote and inaccessible,” stated the memorandum signed by Ripun Bora.

“The people of a free nation are subjected to harassment all in the name of preparation and upgradation of NRC. The system put in place by the state coordinator, NRC is fundamentally flawed and if this mode of functioning is allowed to continue, it will snowball into a major humanitarian crisis and the people will be forced to take to the streets against such arbitrary diktats,” the memorandum read.

The Congress also complained that, the officials entrusted with the verification of documents throughout the various centres are grossly incompetent and it seems, there is acute shortage of trained personnel who perhaps could expedite the verification process and spare the citizens the tremendous harassment that they have to endure.

“It appears that, the state coordinator, NRC is acting under the direct instruction of the ruling state government, which has its own agenda, what is surprising is the fact that all this is being done by using the direction issued by the Supreme court as a veil to give legitimacy to the arbitrary mode functioning of the state coordinator, NRC,” said the memorandum.

The nine-point memorandum submitted by the Congress includes increasing the number of staff in the existing centres to expedite the process of verification of documents, to deploy duly qualified and trained personnel who can actually help out the poor and illiterate people who appear at such centres for verification of their documents, stopping late delivery of notices asking people to appear at far off districts at very short notices.

The Supreme court had earlier directed the state coordinator, NRC to complete the process of publishing final draft of NRC by June 30.

Meanwhile, the Registrar General of India, Sailesh said that, the final draft of NRC will be published by May 31.

The first part draft of NRC was published on December 31 midnight by including 1.90 crore people out of 3.29 crore applicants.

(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)