Amid much hullabaloo about the ongoing process of updation of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam, the orphans sheltered in different homes in the State have been living under the fear that their names would remain excluded from the updated NRC due to lack of documents.
The Assam Government — under the supervision of Registrar General of India — has recently started the process of updating the NRC of 1951 and it is expected to include the names of genuine Indian citizens, the names of whose forefathers were there in the NRC of 1951 and the electoral rolls of 1971. A person who wants his name to be included in the updated NRC, needs to ascertain his parental link getting a legacy data, by finding it in the digitized version of NRC 1951 and the electoral rolls of 1971.
“The problem is we are finding it difficult to establish the parental link of the children’s houses in the shelter homes through the legacy data, the digitized version of NRC 1951 and the electoral rolls of 1971, which have been uploaded by the Assam Government on the web,” said Father lukose, Director of an orphanage Snehalaya.
He said that there are over 5,000 children housed in different shelter homes and orphanages in Assam. The numbers could be more as some NGOs have also been running orphanages.
“While some of the children are the victims of militancy in different parts of Assam, there are many children who were brought to the orphanages at a tender age and they were not aware about their parents. It would be difficult for us to find out their parental links, without which we cannot apply for enrolling their names in the NRC,” he said.
When contacted, the officials of the NRC office in Assam have said that there is no instruction as of now by the RGI for some other measures through which the names of these children could be entered in the NRC.
“We are doing it as per the norms specified by the RGI and the Supreme Court. I think the orphanages need to petition the Assam government immediately, so that it can take up the matter with the RGI for fresh direction,” said a senior official of the directorate of the NRC.
Father lukose, however, said that the problem will be more for hundreds of children who had lived in the orphanages in the past and left after growing up and got engaged in different works in different parts of the country.