Our sole aim is NRC free from foreigners: Hajela

Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI, May 1: With the verification of lakhs of NRC documents issued by authorities in other States and around 400 documents issued by authorities from foreign countries left be to verified the NRC authorities have opted to start a district magistrate-level (deputy commissioner-level) verification by themselves so as to meet the Supreme Court deadline.

Such a step has to be taken by the NRC authorities as the apex court’s directive to all chief secretaries of other States to clear document verification did precious little to solve the problem.  

During the last hearing, State NRC coordinator Prateek Hajela did inform the Supreme Court that about 10.76 lakh documents were yet to be received from document issuing authorizes. Hajela also informed the apex court at that hearing that of the 10.76 lakh documents – 4.42 lakh were to be received from various districts in Assam; 2.37 lakh from other issuing authorities such as banks, UIDAI (Aadhaar), CBSE, Ministry of External Affairs, and various Central and State government departments; and 3.97 lakh documents were from various other States. States like Bihar, Delhi and West Bengal have so far verified only six to seven per cent documents sent to them. Even the northeastern States are not doing well in verifying the documents, with Manipur completing only 2.82 per cent verification.

Out of 5,72,809 documents sent to various States, the NRC authority here has received verification results of only 1,75,479 documents, keeping it waiting for responses of 3,97,330 documents. So, going by statistics, only 30 per cent of documents have been verified by other States.

Now three document verification processes – ongoing mismatch family tree verification, ongoing panchayat document verification submitted by married women and the verification of documents from other States – will be conducted simultaneously. Around 50,000 government employees have been engaged in the document verification process.

Talking to The Sentinel on Tuesday, Hajela said: “From May 4 we’re going to conduct three simultaneous document verification processes. There has been little response from document issuing authorities from other States and some foreign countries. In order to get the verification of documents issued by authorities in other States and foreign countries instantly, we’re going to conduct a district magistrate-level (DC-level) document investigation through hearings so as to publish the second and final NRC draft by June 30 this year. Our sole aim is to publish an NRC free from any foreigners without missing the names of any genuine Indian citizen residing in Assam.”

As many as 3.29 people applied for their enrollment in the NRC and they submitted 6.5 crore documents supporting their legacy. The names of 1.90 crore applicants did appear in the first part draft NRC.