The Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered re-verification of 10 per cent of the people who have been excluded from draft National Register of Citizens (NRC) published recently in Assam. A Bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi and Rohington F Nariman said the re-verification of those excluded from the NRC was a “sample survey” for the satisfaction of the court and its schedule would be decided later.
The apex court also deferred the scheduled date of August 30 for receipt of claims and objections to the draft NRC and directed the NRC State Coordinator Prateek Hajela to file an affidavit explaining the implications of allowing fresh additional evidence for those whose names stood excluded from the draft NRC in order to prove their family tree. The matter will be heard next on September 5.
With the Centre presenting the court the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to deal with the claims and objections by the 40 lakh-odd persons who stood excluded from the draft NRC, the court found several contradictions. The Bench raised doubts over the Centre’s proposal to allow a claimant to change his legacy (family tree) document for inclusion in the draft. The Bench failed to understand why fresh additional document be allowed to prove legacy at the stage of claims and objections.
The judges directed Hajela to explain the consequence of allowing such a move. For this reason, the court found it fit to defer the date of dealing with claims and objections that was to begin from August 30 till September 28.
In addition, the court was shown the data of district-wise percentage of population excluded from the draft NRC in a report prepared by the NRC Coordinator. The court took the report on record and said that to ensure that the draft NRC is error-free, it would carry out sample re-verification by an independent agency of at least 10 per cent of the names included in the final draft NRC list. Assam, which had faced influx of people from Bangladesh since the early 20th century, is the only State having an NRC which was first prepared in 1951.
The second draft NRC list was published on July 30 in which out of 3.29 crore people, the names of 2.89 crore were included. The names of 40,70,707 people do not figure in the list. Of these, 37,59,630 names have been rejected and the remaining 2,48,077 are on hold.
On July 31, the apex court had made it clear that there will be no coercive action by authorities against over 40 lakh people, whose names do not figure in the NRC while observing that it was merely a draft.
It had then asked the Centre to formulate modalities and the SOPs including timelines for deciding claims and objections arising out of the publication of the draft.