NRC in Assam again, this time along with the rest of India: Amit Shah

‘NRC is different from the Citizenship Amendment Bill and it has no provisions for excluding any religion from its list’, stated Union Minister of Home Affairs Amit Shah in Rajya Sabha on Tuesday. This statement comes after the updated National Register of Citizens (NRC) raised questions on the discrimination of society on basis of religion. The Minister further added that the NRC process will be carried out across the country, in addition to Assam. Over concerns from Parliament regarding exclusion of individuals, the minister responded that all ‘citizens of India’ irrespective of religion will feature in the NRC list.

The updated NRC list was released in Assam on August 31. The list, which validated bonafide Indian citizens, left out more than 19 lakh applicants. Minister Amit Shah said that the people whose names are missing from the NRC list can approach the tribunals located across the state for appeal. The Assam Government is prepared to provide financial help to the people who do not have money for filing pleas and would even bear the costs of hiring a lawyer for them.

The National Register of Citizens (NRC) is a record containing names of Indian citizens. Assam is the first state in India where updating of NRC is carried out. It aims to identify illegal migrants- primarily from neighbouring country Bangladesh who entered Assam and settled here post March 25, 1971 and then deport them to their native country. The process of updating NRC in Assam started in the year 2013 after the Supreme Court passed the order.

On his defence of the Citizenship Amendment Bill, the minister stated that it was introduced to protect the refugees belonging to Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, Christians and Parsi communities who are being discriminated on the basis of religion. The Citizenship Amendment Bill was passed on January 8, 2016 in the Lok Sabha to grant citizenship status to non-Muslims from neighbouring countries who entered Indi before December31, 2014.

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