About 1.50 lakh ineligible names to be excluded from final draft

NRC publication

Our main purpose is to prepare an error-free NRC, quality control exercise helps us detect errors: Hajela

Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI, July 3: Around 1.50 lakh people whose names have appeared in the first part NRC draft because of human errors are going to be excluded from the complete draft NRC to be published on July 30 this year.

Large-scale human errors in the first part draft of NRC do leave enough rooms for doubt in the preparation of an error-free NRC. State NRC Coordinator Prateek Hajela, however, says that provisions of the Citizenship Rules, 2003 give the State NRC authority adequate opportunities to rectify its errors. He wants to say that the errors are in the part draft, not in the final one.

During the hearing of the NRC case on Monday, Hajela made some startling revelations before the Supreme Court of India regarding human errors that had been made in the run-up to the publication of the first draft NRC. Hajela informed the apex court that about 1.50 lakh ineligible persons had made it to the first part draft NRC because of human errors – wrong data entry, errors in field-level verification, errors on the part of people to whom NRC works were outsourced, errors on the part of some government employees engaged in NRC work etc – because of complexities and magnitude of the job.

Spelling out exact types of errors that had led around 1.50 lakh ineligible persons making it to the first part NRC draft, Hajela informed the apex court that in 65,694 cases their family trees had been found matching earlier, but later all those were found to be false ones.

Hajela further told the court that in 48,456 other cases related to married women, who had submitted panchayat certificates as linkage documents, were found not admissible. The names of all these 48,456 women were included in the first part draft NRC erroneously, Hajela told the apex court.

Hajela also informed the court that during the quality control exercise it came to light that 19,783 other persons included in the first part NRC draft were not illegible. He further said that more such cases would keep coming till the completion of data entry. Hajela let the Supreme Court know that around 1.50 lakh people whose names made it to the first part draft erroneously would be excluded from the complete draft NRC to be published on July 30, 2018. The apex court approved the exclusion of the names of all these people who had been erroneously included in the first part draft NRC in the complete draft to be published on July 30.

All such human errors in the NRC update work make a big question mark hang over the possibility of preparing an error-free NRC in the State. When contacted by The Sentinel on this issue, an optimist Hajela said: “Our main purpose is to prepare an error-free NRC. There is a provision in the Citizenship Rules, 2003 that if anybody’s name appears in part draft, his/her name can be excluded if found ineligible later. Our thrust is also on not dropping the name of a single genuine Indian residing in Assam from the NRC being updated. The NRC which we’re going to publish will be totally free from foreigners.”

Meanwhile, the State NRC authority is going to send a ‘letter of information’ each to all such ineligible persons whose names were included in the first part NRC draft erroneously spelling them out as to why their names were excluded from the complete draft NRC. The letters of information will be sent within seven days of publication of complete draft NRC. Such people, however, will have the liberty to take part in the claim and objection process.

Hajela has said that the complete draft NRC will be published on July 30, 2018 as directed by the apex court, without fail.