20% of Included Names in NRC To be Reverified: Himanta

Assam Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Thursday said that the National Register of Citizens (NRC) published in August 2019 is fundamentally wrong and a new exercise will start after the elections with the permission of the Supreme Court.

Speaking to media, Sarma said that the allegation that the former NRC Coordinator Prateek Hajela who was transferred to Madhya Pradesh last year by the top court was instrumental in preparing a fundamentally wrong NRC.

The NRC has excluded 19 lakh applicants, including a sizeable number of Hindus. The minister stated that although the top court monitored the NRC exercise, Prateek Hajela manipulated in such a way that it can be said that the thief was made by the police. "He prepared a fundamentally wrong NRC and a new NRC exercise will be undertaken after elections if the top court allows," he added saying that they have already seeking permission to allow re-verification of the names included in the NRC. 20 percent of included names in border districts and 10percent elsewhere will be re-verified.

In July last year, the Assam government and the Centre petitioned the SC for such a re-verification exercise but that was not accepted by the apex court after Hajela submitted that re-verification of 27 per cent names was already done. Top ministers and officials have reiterated that the state government sticks to its demand for such a re-verification. The SC had mentioned the prospect of sample re-verification in an order in 2018, saying that the court could consider re-verifying 10 per cent of the names included in the second draft of the NRC.