Ex-NRC chief proposes 'family tree' verification for Assam voter roll cleanup

Former National Register of Citizens (NRC) Coordinator Hitesh Dev Sarma has written to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar suggesting that the procedure of verification adopted for NRC may also be tried for creating a "flawless" electoral roll for Assam.

Assam is going to assembly polls early next year.

Sarma, who is a retired IAS officer, in his letter has said, "From my experience of updating of NRC, I feel, the procedure of verification adopted in NRC may also be tried for creating a flawless electoral roll for Assam. It may be mentioned that the family trees of almost all the persons of Assam are available with the NRC authority and the ECI may get hold of it with the permission of the Supreme Court of India." Thanking the ECI for taking up the intensive revision of the electoral roll in Assam following "large scale detection of foreigners' names" in the voter list of Bihar, Sarma wrote, "The situation of Assam is graver than Bihar or any other state of India so far as the electoral roll is concerned."


Talking about the unique case of Assam regarding citizenship, the former NRC co-ordinator said, "Unlike the other states, the cut-off date for citizenship in Assam is March 25, 1971, as the East Pakistani nationals entering Assam till 1971 were granted citizenship under 6A of the Citizenship Act, 1955 (amended) and infiltration from Bangladesh is continuing till date." He added, to remedy this, the "Family Tree Matching" was introduced. "In the 'Family Tree Matching' process, all the offspring of a 'Legacy Person' from whom lineage is claimed were asked to submit their family details, which were then compared and matched through a software with the other family trees submitted by descendants of the same legacy person. The mechanism was designed to be such that the 'Family Tree' of the genuine offspring matches with each other. And the 'Family Tree' of the imposters, who attempt to assume descendance through pre-1971 legacy documents as their ancestors, does not match with that of the genuine offspring," Sarma wrote.