Assam NRC: 9000 Applications for Duplicate Admit Cards at West Bengal Board

Guwahati: In a positive turn of events, around 9,000 residents of Assam, who were reportedly excluded from the complete draft of the NRC, have applied to the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education (WBBSE) for issuing duplicate admit cards of higher secondary examinations held before 1973 to them. This was reportedly informed by a senior board official on Wednesday.

It may be noted that these 9,000 people who had passed the secondary examination under West Bengal Board Secondary Education (WBBSE) before 1973 from Tripura and are now residing in Assam, have now applied to the WBBSE seeking documents for submitting to the National Register of Citizens (NRC),

As per reports, West Bengal Board Secondary Education (WBBSE) President Kalyanmoy Ganguly said that the board had issued and dispatched admit cards to 6,000 applicants, who actually hailed from Tripura and later migrated to Assam. They had passed the higher secondary examination under the West Bengal board before 1973.

“We are in the process of screening the remaining applications on a war footing,” Ganguly further asserted.

It may also be added that the applicants were residing in Tripura before 1973. Since there was no secondary school education board in the north-eastern state at that time, the schools there were affiliated to the WBBSE, Ganguly said.

It needs to be mentioned that the admit card of the board examination is considered as an important document as the date of birth of the candidate is mentioned in it.

Refusing to comment on whether the applications for issuance of duplicate admit cards were linked to the exclusion of the names of lakhs of Bengalis from the complete draft of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam, Ganguly said, “Those who have applied for the duplicate admit cards may have lost the original documents.”

It needs to be mentioned that the applications for the duplicate admit cards were forwarded to the WBBSE by the state Education Department since July, Ganguly added.

It may be noted that earlier this year, the publication of the complete draft of the NRC in Assam on July 30 had triggered a controversy after over 40 lakh names were found to have been excluded from it.

Assam's draft National Register of Citizens (NRC) has triggered a nationwide political row after over 40 lakh of the 3.29 crore applicants were excluded from it, sparking concerns about their future.

However, with another door for securing a place in the NRC list of names being open for the ones who could not find a place in the NRC draft, applicants have finally found a reason to be hopeful at last.

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