Anomalies in NRC work to the fore

The BJP government has pleaded for re-verification of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) which was rejected by the Supreme Court but the standard operating procedure (SOP) for updating the NRC had facilitated sufficient powers to check the inclusion of foreigners’ names in the updating process.

Indicating that the state government which was now critical of the NRC had failed to carry out its responsibility, sources said that the government could have taken effective steps to ensure that the names of foreigners were not included in the NRC.

Though the process of updating the NRC is monitored by the Supreme Court, government machinery was used to carry out the job and the SOP for updating the NRC had clearly stated that local registrars of citizen registration “may cause or direct to cause verification of names already included in the draft NRC if considered necessary”.

The SOP further said that in such cases, the district registrars of citizen registration would authorise any officer to carry out a probe.

Sources in the NRC offices said that the government should have taken advantage of that particular clause of the SOP, which was cleared by the Supreme Court, to carry out investigations against suspected foreigners as the LRCRs are the circle officers of the government and DRCRs are the deputy commissioners.

But the government failed to take advantage of that particular clause to carry out probes against suspected nationals.

Whenever the name of any person is referred to a Foreigners Tribunal, his or her name is automatically struck off from the NRC. The government should have used its machinery to find out the suspected foreign nationals and referred the cases to the FTs so that the names of foreigners could be struck off.