NRC: Assam CM says in discussion with Centre on relief to 27 lakh residents

Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Monday said that Registrar General of India (RGI) is yet to notify the National Register of Citizens (NRC) but discussion is underway to provide relief to the people who have been unable to get Aadhaar cards due to locking of their biometrics as part of the NRC updating process.

Replying to a question by Congress MLA Kamalakhya Dey Purkayastha on the 27 lakh people not able to get Aadhaar cards, he said, “I am in consultation with the Centre on this and hopefully something positive will happen soon. But we can’t go against SC orders. If required, we may have to approach the SC at some time to address the issue”.

“The RGI is yet to be notify the NRC. The court has asked us to ensure security of data. We have detailed the Centre about the available security system in place. Both the issues are under the consideration of the Centre,” he said.


He added, “We had formed a cabinet subcommittee. The committee had said that those people who have names in the supplementary list can get Aadhar card, this means 17 lakh people can get the Aadhaar cards.”

Sarma said, “The Supreme court has authorised the Centre to provide the relief and a office memorandum was made. We are in the process of providing relief. We will soon provide relief. A lot of informal discussion is on with Centre, it is true that these people are facing lot of trouble. Final call will be taken by Supreme court.”

NRC is an exercise to weed out illegal immigrants and is monitored by the Supreme Court.

Around 3.30 crore people had applied for inclusion in the NRC, but the names of nearly 40 lakhs of them were excluded in the draft NRC published on July 30, 2018. Of them, around 36.28 lakh people had claimed for inclusion on the list and about 2 lakhs had registered their objections. They were called for subsequent hearings where provisions were made to obtain their biometric details.

The supplementary NRC list had found more than 31.1 million people eligible to be included in the registry and left out over 1.9 million people.