No response yet from RGI, says State NRC Coordinator

'Corrective direction'

Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI: The State NRC Coordinator continues to get the silent treatment from the RGI (Registrar General of India) on 'direction for corrective measures' for an error-free NRC (National Register of Citizens) in the State. It was the RGI under whose direction the NRC updation was carried out.

Seeking necessary direction for corrective measures in the NRC, State NRC Coordinator Hitesh Dev Sarma did write a letter to the RGI on February 15, 2020. He, however, hasn't received any direction from the RGI towards that end as yet. Rather, the RGI has asked the State NRC Coordinator to wind up the NRC update exercise as soon as possible.

The affidavit submitted to the Gauhati High Court by Sarma has revealed massive anomalies in the NRC. The Coordinator said that there were massive anomalies of all hues at different stages of NRC update, leading to the inclusion of a large number of ineligible names in the NRC.

"Seeking necessary corrective direction is in the interest of an error-free NRC which is of utmost importance as NRC is directly related to the national security and integrity. But no direction has been communicated by the RGI on the anomalies reported. Rather, instruction has been received for issue of rejection slips (to the over 19 lakh names dropped from the NRC) and winding up of the operation of updation of NRC," the affidavit said.

The State NRC Coordinator has also informed the High Court that "RGI is also silent on the final publication of NRC for which it is the only authority to take action, and till date the final NRC is yet to the published by the RGI as per Clause 7 of the Rules under the Citizenship Rules, 2003."

On the anomalous inclusion of 1.02 lakh names deleted from the NRC following the 27 per cent reverification when Prateek Hajela was at the helm of affairs, the State Coordinator said, "One definitely can't ignore the 73 per cent unverified results where there may be 2.77 lakh undeserving names in the NRC going by the same arithmetic."

He further said that without any quality check proper directive the family-tree matching was largely anomalous, leading to the inclusion of undeserving names in the citizenship document. According to him, the verification of documents was done by a district magistrate investigation team comprising mostly second and third grade officers whose competency to verify genuineness of documents is not beyond doubt.

Pointing out the serious lapse in the selection of data entry operators who played a major role in NRC update, Sarma said, "It's a matter of serious concern that before the selection, the citizenship status, integrity and loyalty of the operators were never verified."

In minority-dominated areas in Baghbor, Kolgachia and Dolgaon 2,346 legacy data codes were verified, but out of them 943 names were found to be erroneously entered in the NRC. If the legacy data codes of other areas are also verified, the number of such erroneously included names in the NRC will be quite big. This is the reason why Sarma said, "Unless a thorough re-examination of the entire family tree verification process is made, a large number of ineligible names may continue to remain in the NRC."

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