Assam plans to detect people who forged documents to get enlisted in NRC
Guwahati: The Assam government is planning to launch a drive to detect people of “doubtful nationality” who forged documents to get their names enrolled in the National Register of Citizens (NRC) updated in August 2019.
It is significant that in the recent exercise of updating the National Register of Citizens in the state about 3.3 crore residents of the state had applied but application of 19.06 applicants were rejected. In the process of scrutiny of the documents submitted to establish citizenship, it was found that the documents of about 2 lakh applicants were forged.
Assam chief minister told reporters, “We shall start the process of weeding out people who used forged documents to figure in the updated NRC. We are consulting some experts on how to take action against such people.”
The NRC authorities had sought a set of documents for applicants to ascertain their citizenship and be on the list of Indians. The documents included a refugee registration certificate, citizenship certificate, government employment certificate, land and tenancy record, and birth certificate.
Apart from the forged papers, the NRC authorities did not find any back-end source of about 1.5 lakh documents submitted by applicants while another 2.5 lakh sets of papers were illegible.
About the cut-off year to grant citizenship in Assam, the chief minister said that he would like only the people who have been living in Assam from or before 1951 to be included in the NRC. “But we have to take the position of the government, which agreed on 1971 as the cut-off year for people to claim citizenship,” he said.
The Assam Accord of 1985 had prescribed the midnight of March 24, 1971, as the cut-off date for detection and deportation of illegal immigrants from Assam.
Clause 6 of the Accord proposed constitutional, legislative, and administrative safeguards to protect, preserve, and promote the cultural, social, and linguistic identity and heritage of the Assamese people. A committee constituted to define ‘Assamese people’ later proposed January 1951 as the cut-off date for any Indian citizen residing in Assam to be defined as an Assamese to implement Clause 6.
“We executed the delimitation of the (Parliament and Assembly) constituencies, came out with steps to protect the land and homes of our people, and guaranteed 100% jobs for the Assamese people. We have fulfilled everything in Clause 6,” the chief minister said.
Meanwhile, several civil society groups of the state have filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court challenging the cut off date for detection and deportation of immigrants from Assam.
The civil society groups are agitating to change it to January 1951 as cut off date.
