Poor response to NRC claims & objections concerns Prabajan Virodhi Manch

GUWAHATI: The Prabajan Virodhi Manch, a forum against illegal migration across the border has expressed grave concern over the negligible number of objections filed against suspected Bangladeshis whose names have been enrolled in the complete draft NRC.

Manch convenor advocate Upamanyu Hazarika told reporters on Monday that if the objection exercise in the ongoing NRC update does not yield the desired results, detection of illegal Bangladeshis in Assam will be nearly an impossible task in future.

Hazarika said only 194 objections have so far been filed before the NRC authorities which is a very worrying trend.

“Filling objections against 194 applicants is miniscule. To give perspective, the figure released regarding the number of those excluded 40.07 lakh is far short of the official estimates over the last few decades,” he said.

According to Hazarika 21-digit Application Receipt Number (ARN) has become a major a hurdle in filing objections.

“Every applicant has to compulsorily quote the ARN while filing any objection. This is the first step in the application to be filed, only after which other details of the person included have to be filled in. This ARN is, however, not publicly available and even the NRC Sewa Kendras are reluctant to disclose such information,” he said.

Hazarika said Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal had only two days ago appealed to organizations and individuals to file objections, but the impossibility of filing objections due to non-availability of ARN was not dealt with. “There is no alternative to re-verification of many names included in the draft NRC and that is what the Chief Minister should focus on, particularly for border and migrant dominated districts,” he said.

On other hand, Hazarika said altogether 5,11,254 out of 40,07,707 persons whose names did not figure in the complete draft NRC, have so far filed claims to include their names in the final NRC. “With barely three weeks left for the deadline of filing claims it is surprising that only 12.5 per cent of those excluded from the draft NRC has applied for inclusion of their names in the final NRC. There are reasons to inquire about such less number of claims submitted so far,” he said.

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