Rejection of panchayat documents will lead to complicacy: CPI (M)

NRC UPDATE EXERCISE

BY OUR STAFF REPORTER

GUWAHATI, Oct 26: The Assam state committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) on Thursday said that if the linkage certificate issued by Pancayats is not accepted as valid supporting documents for including a person’s me in the tiol Register of Citizens (NRC), which is being updated in Assam, fresh complicacy would be occurred in the NRC update exercise.

Addressing a press conference here, CPI (M)’s Assam state committee general secretary Deben Bhattacharya said that when the Supreme Court ordered updating of NRC with March 24, 1971 as the base year, the linkage certificate issued by panchayat was a valid document for inclusion of a person’s me in NRC but now if this document is rejected fresh problems will occur resulting in the delay of the update process. 

The Gauhati High Court had refused residency certificates issued by gram panchayats for the NRC update.  On February 28, the High Court had held that residency certificates issued by panchayats would no longer be considered as valid documents for NRC.

The NRC office has received over 48 lakh such “link documents”, mostly from married women to eble them to establish their “link” with their parents.  The High Court noted that issuance of these certificates ran the risk of allowing foreign tiols to procure them, and therefore, new certificates should be issued for the purpose.

Bhattacharya said that NRC State Coorditor Prateek Hajela in an affidavit submitted to the Supreme Court recently has informed that out of the 48 lakh citizens, who have submitted panchayat documents as linkage certificate and supporting documents, the mes of only 18 lakh citizens would be included in the NRC and rest 30 lakh citizens would currently be excluded from the NRC, which is in no way acceptable.

“The NRC State coorditor without any authority has identified a section of citizens as the origil inhabitants and included their me in the NRC but no definition of origil inhabitants in Assam has so far been fixed. Even no specific definition of origil inhabitant is outlined in the Citizenship Act, 1955. So Hajela must clarify his stands on what basis he has excluded 30 lakh citizens from NRC,” said the CPI (M) general secretary.

He further alleged that both the Central as well as the State government has unnecessarily interfered the NRC update exercise and made the process complex.

Bhattacharya said that the BJP has planned to stop the NRC update work to pave the way for granting citizenship to Hindu Bangladeshis.  The CPI (M) also demanded the government to make the ga Framework Agreement public. “We want a solution of the six-decade long ga insurgency issue, but we will never allow the Central Government to compromise the territorial integrity of Assam,” he said.