Guwahati: In what was awaited for last so many years, the first draft of the updated National Register of Citizens (NRC) was published at the stroke of midnight on Sunday containing names of 1.9 crore Indian citizens living in Assam.
The remaining 1.39 crore names are still going through process of examination, scrutiny and verification.
The Registrar General of India, Mr Sailesh who was present when the first draft NRC was published, told reporters that the final draft in all probabilities would be published within 2018 itself. The process of the NRC update had started in December 2013 and the applications for it were invited in May-June 2015.
3.29 crore applied for NRC
The last date of submission of applications was August 31, 2015. Altogether, 3.29 crore residents of Assam had applied for inclusion of their names in the registry after verification of documents and family tree, while around 6.6 crore documents were submitted by the applicants.
The first draft of the NRC has been prepared with the names of those whose document verification has been completed. The complete draft will be published after the verification process of documents submitted by all the applicants is completed. Indicating that process of verifying the documents was going on, the NRC coordinator Prateek Hajela said that response from other states has not been very encouraging, Around 5.5 lakh documents were sent to other states for verification, but only around 1.5 lakh documents have been returned. Meanwhile, a large number of people came out in rural Assam on Monday morning to verify their names at NRC help centers where draft NRC was published and kept.
