NRC: A Major Step Forward

With the publication of the final National Register of Citizens (NRC) on Saturday, a major portion of a daunting task has been finally completed. The NRC State Coordinator and his huge team comprising government employees, school teachers, and several thousand contractual employees must be heartily congratulated for it. There is no denying the fact that the NRC – originally prepared in Assam in 1951 in the wake of the massive movement of people from the then newly-created East Pakistan - should have been updated every decade as is done in the case of the Census exercise. A very important document that the then Ministry of Home Affairs had prepared at the behest of then Assam premier Lokapriya Gopinath Bordoloi and his immediate successor Bishnuram Medhi, the NRC in fact was deliberately allowed to disappear in some districts where the presence of infiltrators was more. Successive governments, both in Assam and at the Centre can never absolve themselves from the criminal negligence that they had committed by way of not preserving a copy of the original NRC of 1951. Had that been done, there would not have been so much trouble in detecting the infiltrators who entered Assam in the subsequent decades. Nevertheless, while one must appreciate the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) for having convinced and compelled the then UPA government headed by Dr Manmohan Singh, on May 5, 2005 to take a decision to prepare/update the NRC so crucial for identification of the illegal migrants. Despite that however the Congress regime kept delaying the process until the AASU once again compelled the Centre in 2010 – full five years later – to take up a pilot NRC project in Barpeta and Chhaygaon. But then, one must also put on record the fact that the pilot project was stalled by the All Assam Minorities Students’ Union, allegedly with the blessings of the ruling Congress. Thanks to the constant pressure of the AASU, the government relented and began the process once again in 2013, only to be subsequently literally forced by the Supreme Court to make the NRC happen. The people of Assam must thank the Supreme Court, and more particularly Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, for directly monitoring the NRC preparation despite so many hurdles created by different quarters which are not interested in making Assam free of infiltrators and finding a solution to the vexed issue.

But then, as the NRC was finally published, a section of people are not very happy. They include the AASU itself, which has felt the NRC had remained incomplete despite such a huge exercise. The AASU’s viewpoint is that the number of non-included names was nowhere near the figures that different governments had cited in a forum as high and sacred as Parliament. Home ministers of different governments at the Centre had given figures that were actually much higher. Indrajit Gupta, as Home minister, had in 1996 put the number of illegal Bangladeshi migrants in India at one crore. Sriprakash Jaiswal, as MoS Home, in 2004 said it was 1.2 crore, of which about 50 lakh were in Assam. Kiren Rijiju, as MoS Home had in 2016 said it was around two crore. Based on its own earlier claims and on the statements of different governments in Parliament, it is but quite natural that the AASU and the people of Assam had expected a much bigger figure than just about 19.06 lakh people who were left out of the final NRC. The AASU therefore is justified in expressing its unhappiness, but not before reposing faith in the Supreme Court for taking necessary steps to make the NRC ‘complete’ in all respects.

Whether one agrees or not on the number of non-included people, one thing has been ascertained now – that there are presently 3.11 crore Indian citizens in Assam, and that the rest are not Indian citizens. The Supreme Court had, in its historic judgment of July 12, 2005, while scrapping the notorious IM(DT) Act, clearly stated that Assam was facing an ‘external aggression’ in the shape of Bangladeshi influx, and that it was the duty of the Union of India to take ‘all measures for protection of the State of Assam from such external aggression…as enjoined in Article 355 of the Constitution.’ While persons whose names were not included in the NRC can now go to Tribunals and probably also the courts of law to seek redressal, it is for the Centre to recall what the Supreme Court had exactly said in that historic judgment and spell out how it proposes to protect Assam from the external aggression.

Also Read: Is your name on the final list of the NRC Assam ? Read here to find out