Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma vows to fix faulty NRC at 'opportune time'

Guwahati: Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said that let there be opportune time, the faulty National Register of Citizens (NRC) will be corrected.

Sarma on Tuesday said, “NRC is faulty. During the NRC exercise it was falsely shown that a missing father or maternal uncle was meeting their family. Brother and sister meeting was shown. Former NRC co-ordinator Prateek Hajela had said a bluff, and others made people believe that bluff.”

He said, “Let there be an opportune time we will correct the NRC.”


Assam was the first state in the country where NRC exercise was rolled out, NRC is a supreme Court monitored exercise aimed at weeding out illegal immigrants.

The supplementary NRC list, published on August 31, 2019, had found more than 31.1 million people eligible to be included in the registry while leaving out over 1.9 million people.

BJP has been unhappy over the NRC and has stated as NRC authority refused to accept refugee certificates issued prior 1971 because of which large scale Bengalee Hindu, Koch Rajbonshi and Buddhist people got excluded from NRC.

The Supreme court on August 22 this year issued notices to the notices to the Union Government, the Assam Government, the present NRC State Coordinator, and the Registrar General of India following a writ petition filed by former NRC coordinator seeking for a complete, comprehensive and time- bound reverification of the draft NRC as well as the supplementary list of NRC.

A bench comprising Justice P.S. Narasimha and Justice Atul Chandurkar took up the matter and issued notices.

Former NRC co-ordinator Hitesh Dev Sarma has pleaded for a complete, comprehensive and time- bound reverification of the draft NRC as well as the supplementary list of NRC under the provision of the Clause 4(3) of the Schedule of the Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and
Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules 2003.

The updation process of the NRC in Assam is caught in a logjam two years after the publication of the supplementary list on August 31, 2019. Rejection slips are yet to be issued to those excluded – who can move the Foreigners Tribunal (FT) to challenge the decision – and RGI has not yet notified the NRC.

In May 2021, the then NRC coordinator Hitesh Dev Sarma had filed a petition in the Supreme Court, seeking comprehensive and time-bound reverification of the draft NRC and the supplementary list under the supervision of a monitoring committee preferably represented by the respective district judge, district magistrate and superintendent of police in every district.

Sarma, who has been involved in the NRC process since its initial days, had in 2020 submitted in the Gauhati High Court that the RGI is silent on the NRC anomalies process. Instead of giving direction on how to rectify the same, the RGI had asked NRC authorities to wind up the operation of updation of NRC by issuing rejection slips, he had alleged.

The National Register of Citizens (NRC)directorate has submitted an affidavit in Gauhati high court pointing to arithmetic of 2.77 lakhs undeserving names in the NRC.

In October 2020 the Gauhati High Court asked the coordinator of the NRC, Hitesh Dev Sarma to file a comprehensive affidavit and bring on record cases where individuals who are undeserving and not legally entitled to be included, are finding ways to be included in the NRC. The court ordered this after some declared foreigners claimed that they cannot be considered foreigners as their names have appeared in the NRC.

The bench gave this order while hearing a case –– Rahima Begum @Rahima Khatun versus Union of India and five others.

Sarma in affidavit in the High court said 4,795 numbers of people, of which 1,032 ineligible persons belonging to Declared Foreigner (DF), Doubtful Voter (DV) , person having cases pending at Foreigners Tribunal(PFT), their descendants (DFD, DVD, PFTD)besides there are 3,763 numbers of person who were found ineligible for other reasons however made it to NRC.

The Supreme Court which is monitoring the NRC updation had earlier rejected Assam and Centre government’s plea for conducting 20 per cent sample re-verification of the draft NRC published on July 30, 2018, in districts bordering Bangladesh.

Former NRC co-ordinator, Prateek Hajela on July 18, 2019, submitted in the Court that 27 percent incidental re-verification is already done during the claims and objections process.

Sarma in his affidavit had said, “But considering the fact that 1,02,462 names deleted through 'incidental verification' of 27%, one definitely cannot ignore the remaining 73% unverified results where there may be 2.77 lakhs undeserving names in the NRC going by the same arithmetic,”

The affidavit stated, “absence of quality check” in the Original Inhabitant (OI) marking and the family tree matching might be the main reason for inclusion of such “undeserving” names in the Draft NRC and the Supplementary list where some “delinquent officers got free hand to upload wrong results of verification into the data base”.