Elections Will Not Affect the NRC Process

On February 20, a Division Bench of the Supreme Court consisting Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman passed an Order regarding the update process of the NRC in Assam. The Bench directed the Union Government to speed up the process and have a final list ready by May 31 and allowed 30 days’ time after to make additional corrections. The completed final list should be ready by June 30. This came after the Court had been appraised of the status of the process by the NRC Coordinator, Prateek Hajela.

Hajela informed the Court that since the publication of the first draft on December 31, 2017, a further 38.43 lakh applications had been scrutinised. This brings the total scrutinised applications to around 2.29 crore, with a remainder of around 1 crore yet to be processed. Hajela also informed the Court that by his estimate, these remaining 1 crore applications will be processed by May 31, after which he would require a further one month to do the “final mop-up operations”. The remaining 1 crore pending applications were classified as;

1. Family Tree Mismatches (48 lakhs)

2. Gaon Panchayat Secretary Certificates (29 lakhs)

3. Persons for whom results of document verification are awaited (16 lakhs)

4. Technical hold cases (16 lakhs)

The Court did not accept the Union of India’s suggestion for extending the time as the Local Body, Municipal, and Panchayat elections are due in Assam between March and April this year. The Court, however, made it clear that the elections will not affect the NRC process and that the process will continue with the same level of manpower that it currently has. The Court also rejected the proposal to appoint an Additional State Coordinator and specifically directed the Registrar General of India to desist from such a move. The case has been listed for hearing on March 27, when the Court will take stock of the progress.