Over 2 lakh “undeserving” names likely in Assam NRC, High Court told

December 10: The Gauhati High Court has been informed that the Assam National Register of Citizens may have included up to 2.77 lakh “undeserving” names due to poor quality check and control.

The NRC authorities arrived at this estimate based on the deletion of over a lakh names following the verification of a mere 27% of the draft NRC, according to an affidavit submitted by Assam’s NRC co-ordinator, Hitesh Dev Sarma, as reported by NDTV. This leaves grounds to conclude that the rest of the NRC could have many more ineligible names, it said.

“Considering the fact that 1,02,462 names were deleted through ‘incidental verification’ of 27% of the draft NRC, one definitely cannot ignore the remaining 73% unverified results where there may be 2.77 lakh undeserving names in the NRC going by the same arithmetic,” said the affidavit, a copy of which with NDTV.

The NRC co-ordinator further states in the affidavit that an absence of quality check in the original inhabitant marking and verification, a lack of quality check in family tree cross-checking and matching were the reasons behind such “wrongful inclusions”.

The Gauhati High Court had sought such an affidavit while hearing a case by “declared foreigners” who had claimed that their names appear in the final Assam NRC released online in 2019. The final Assam NRC had found over 31.1 million people eligible to be included in the registry, marking 1.9 million people.

The affidavit, filed this week, categorically admits that while re-verifying up to 10,199 names in August last year, 4,795 ineligible persons got included while 5,404 eligible names didn’t make it.

The “ineligible persons” included doubtful voters, declared foreigners, persons against whom cases are pending in foreigners’ tribunals, and their family members – they will be excluded from the updated NRC.

Assam’s final NRC is yet to be notified by the Registrar General of India (RGI), thus the process is stuck in a limbo.

The Supreme Court, which is monitoring its updating, had earlier rejected the Assam and the Central government’s plea to conduct 20 per cent sample re-verification.

The BJP had claimed that the Assam NRC was “faulty” and had rejected it.

https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/over-2-lakh-undeserving-names-possibly-in-assam-nrc-high-court-told-2336853