The Supreme Court on Wednesday deferred till further orders the commencement of the process of receiving claims and objections for the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam and sought the Centre’s response on the suggestion that any one of the 10 documents can be used by claimants to prove legacy.
A bench of justices Ranjan Gogoi and R F Nariman perused the report of Assam’s NRC coordinator Prateek Hajela and said it was agreeable to his suggestions that any one of the 10 of a total 15 documents provided in List-A of the claim form can be used by the claimants to prove legacy.
The bench also expressed reservation over sharing with the Centre the copy of the NRC Coordinator’s report on the modalities for receiving claims from those excluded in draft NRC, saying though the Government of India was “extremely interested”, the court “has to strike a balance”.
The top court deferred till further orders the commencement of the process of receiving claims and objections for the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam.
Attorney General K K Venugopal, appearing for Centre, said a copy of the report should be given to them as “Government of India is extremely interested in it”.
To this, the bench said “the Government of India may be interested but we need to balance it.”
As Venugopal persisted with his demand for a copy of report saying “If I can see it, then only I can file my response to it”, the bench said “Not at this stage. We will put the list of documents which can be relied upon in our orders. You can see the order and file the response”.