Guwahati: In what has created serious confusion and panic, the NRC authorities have served “re-verification summons” to hundreds of people whose names are in the draft National Register of Citizens. These notices have been served ahead of August 31, when the final list is scheduled to be published.
The cause of panic is not only the fear of being declared foreigners but also the distance of the re-verification centres as some residents of Sontoli village, in Kamrup rural district, have been asked to appear for hearings in Golaghat, some 450 km away. Most of those summoned are Muslims from Kamrup Rural, Goalpara and Baksa districts, none of which share a border with Bangladesh.
However, the security agencies justify more and more re-verification in districts not close to border. Saying the majority of those migrated to India after 1971 are settled far from the border districts, security sources said the majority of the space in border districts were occupied by pre-1971 migrants, so the recent migrants had to travel to far-flung areas of the state. Admitting that these notices have caused panic among their recipients — mostly Muslim farmers and daily-wage labourers, senior advocate Hafiz Rashid Choudhury said: “We don’t understand why hearings are being held again when the NRC authorities have already completed a series of verifications and re-verifications. People across the districts are in a state of panic. Things are getting too complicated.”
Questions were also raised about the timing of these re-verification notices as this came soon after the BJP government questioned the efficiency of state NRC coordinator Prateek Hajela in the state Assembly.
Assam’s minister of commerce and industry, transport and parliamentary affairs Chandra Mohan Patowary, who criticised the NRC coordinator, also revealed some confidential data, which the Supreme Court had sought from the NRC authorities in a sealed envelope, to expose the anomalies in the NRC updation process.
