NRC Draft Row: Supreme Court orders re-verification of people excluded from the list

The Supreme Court on Monday ordered re-verification of 10 per cent of the people excluded from Assam’s National Register of Citizens (NRC) draft published in July 2018 and raised doubts over the Narendra Modi government’s proposal to allow a claimant to change his legacy document for inclusion in the draft.

A bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi and RF Nariman said that the re-verification process was a “sample survey” for the satisfaction of the apex court.

The apex court pointed out certain contradictions in the Centre’s Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for the filing them and deferred the scheduled date of August 30 for receipt of claims and objections to the draft NRC.

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The highly anticipated second and final draft of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) was published on July 30 with 2.89 crore names of total 3.29 crore applicants in Assam. The names of over four million people could not find a place in the document that will serve as the proof of Assamese identity.

On July 31, the apex court, however, made it clear that no coercive action will be taken against any of the 40,70,707 people, whose names were excluded from the NRC draft.

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The apex court had also asked the Modi government to prepare modalities and Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), including timeline for deciding claims and objections against the draft.

Assam, which had faced the influx of people from Bangladesh since the early 20^th century, is the only state having an NRC which was first prepared in 1951.

(With inputs from PTI)