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Assam minority students’ union to move SC as NRC coordinator tells DCs to prune final list

All Assam Minority Students’ Union to file plea in Supreme Court against the NRC coordinator’s letter asking to remove more ‘ineligible’ people from the final list.

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Guwahati: The All Assam Minority Students’ Union (AAMSU) is set to file a petition in the Supreme Court, challenging the state National Register of Citizens (NRC) coordinator’s move to delete the names of “ineligible” persons allegedly wrongfully included in the final NRC list. 

The final list, published on 31 August last year, had excluded 19.22 lakh names out of the nearly 3.3 crore applicants.

On 13 October, state NRC coordinator Hitesh Dev Sarma issued a letter to all deputy commissioners (DC) and district registrars of citizen registration (DRCR) “to submit the list of ineligible persons for having their names in the NRC along with speaking orders justifying reasons for each case for necessary action for deletion”. 

“The AAMSU will challenge this notification before the Supreme Court. We will file a petition. The appointment of Hitesh Dev Sarma is illegal,” AAMSU advisor Azizur Rahman told ThePrint last week. “We had challenged his appointment in November last year. When the matter is sub judice, how can he file any order?” 

On his part, Sarma did not elaborate on the recent notification but said “names of ineligible persons, particularly doubtful voters (DV), declared foreigners (DF), those with cases pending in foreigners’ tribunals (FTs) and their descendants are to be deleted through speaking orders by DCs”. 

Sarma had on 19 February asked all DCs and DRCRs to provide details of “ineligible persons” included in the NRC. 

This time, the coordinator has also urged the district officials to write “speaking orders” for deletion of ineligible names under Clause 4(6) of the Schedule of Citizenship (Registration of Citizens & Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003, stating that the Registrar General of India (RGI) is yet to publish the final NRC as per Clause 7 of the same Rules.

When contacted over phone, however, several DCs of Lower Assam districts said they are not aware of any such order, while state government officials refused to comment.

In November 2019, the minority students’ union filed a petition in the Supreme Court demanding the removal of Sarma, who was appointed after former NRC coordinator Prateek Hajela was transferred to his home state Madhya Pradesh following a Supreme Court directive.

Sarma, an Assam Civil Service officer, was put in charge of the NRC Directorate according to an official order of the state government on 9 November 2019.


Also read: No buyers, markets closed — how Covid hit livelihood of women potters in this Assam village


‘Can’t issue such orders’

Opposition Congress has slammed the NRC authorities’ move.

Party MLA and leader of Opposition in the Assembly Debabrata Saikia said NRC authorities had not obtained permission from the Supreme Court to issue the directive.

“Such a directive is tantamount to contempt of the Supreme Court because the NRC state co-ordinator has not taken the court’s leave to issue the directive. The apex court has not passed any order regarding omission or inclusion of fresh names in the final NRC,” Saikia said in a recent statement.

Former AGP leader Jagdish Bhuyan, the state convenor of the newly-floated Assam Jatiya Parishad, said the plight of 19.22 lakh people excluded from the final NRC should have been prioritised. 

“We want an NRC that is pure and correct. The process to enable appeals of 19 lakh people should have been initiated first,” Bhuyan said. “The foreigners should have been then detected and deleted. When the draft NRC was published, Home Minister Amit Shah took credit of detecting 42 lakh ‘ghuspethiye (infiltrators)’, but when it came down to 19 lakh in final NRC, they shifted responsibility.”

Former Assam DGP Harekrishna Deka told ThePrint, “The legal status of the NRC has not been clarified by the Supreme Court, and without legal status, the NRC is vulnerable to manipulation.” 

However, Abhijeet Sharma of NGO Assam Public Works (APW), a petitioner in the NRC case, welcomed the move. 

“I think that the detection and deletion of names of illegal foreigners can be done anytime and anywhere,” he told ThePrint. “I spoke with legal experts as well in this regard. We welcome the bold step taken by the state coordinator. Every Assamese Indian should welcome it.”

‘Embargo from Supreme Court’

Legal experts that ThePrint spoke to said there is a Supreme Court embargo on “re-verification” of names already included in the list. 

The apex court had on 23 July, 2019, rejected the central and state government’s plea to conduct a sample re-verification process to ascertain wrongful inclusions and exclusions. This was before the final list was published. 

“There is a specific embargo from the Supreme Court on the question of re-verification of names already included. When a request was made before final publication, the court had specifically denied that request,” Supreme Court lawyer for one of the stakeholders, Fuzail Ahmad Ayyubi, told ThePrint. “It is beyond understanding that when the Union of India and State of Assam could not move ahead without the leave of the court, how could the state coordinator.” 

He explained: “When the final NRC was published, a press release from the former state coordinator had stated that it is only after proceedings under Clause 4(3) have been completed that the final NRC was published. So, the process of 4(3) was done, and over and done, only after court’s approval.” Ayyubi said the removal of “descendants of ineligible persons” as sought by the new state NRC coordinator is “impermissible”.

“There is a subsequent judgment as well, holding that for people born before 2004, if the legacy person is Indian, they will be included in NRC, regardless of the status of their other parent, from whom legacy is not drawn,” he added. “This time the new coordinator has sought to exclude descendants of DV/DF/PFT, which again would be impermissible if such descendants have drawn legacy from a parent who is a valid citizen.”

Speaking to ThePrint, Aman Wadud, a Guwahati-based human rights lawyer, said, “The NRC process attained finality on 31 August 2019. The power of LRCR and DRCR under clause 4(3) & 4 (6) of the 2009 schedule have been exhausted the day the final NRC was published. The entire process is monitored by the Supreme Court. The state coordinator cannot assume that he is more powerful than the Supreme Court.”


Also read: All about Assam-Mizoram border dispute, which dates back 50 yrs & still remains unresolved


 

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