NRC is final, rules Assam Foreigners’ Tribunal

Synopsis: Recently Foreigner’s tribunal in NRC issues a notice stating that the NRC list is final.

Introduction

While the Registrar General of India has not yet issued a notification on Assam’s National Register of Citizens (NRC) to make it a legal document, a Foreigners’ Tribunal (FT) has gone ahead and recorded it as the “final NRC”.

The FT also held that “there is no doubt that this NRC Assam published in 2019 is nothing but Final NRC.”

About the NRC

The SC had mandated the NRC, after which the centre and state government of Assam had taken it up. The first draft in 2018 had left 4 Million people out, and the June 2019 list left 1Lakh more.

Another draft was released in August 2019. The final draft absorbed 2.2 million of those left out in the previous drafts. Of the total population of 33 Million, around 1.9 Million were left out. The fate of those left-out persons was to be decided by Foreigners Tribunals (FT’s).

This created an issue as different segments claimed that this exercise is biased towards Bengali Hindus or Bengali Muslims.

Revision of NRC

Considering all these, the Assam government and even the New NRC coordinator, have made repeated requests for a re-verification of 20% of the list, especially for the area’s bordering Bangladesh. With FT declares the list to be final, the questions of revision become doubtful. Even if the revision is taken up, it has its own set of problems.

What are the other issues associated with NRC?

There have been many other issues creating delays in the revision process. The new NRC coordinator’s petition is still pending in court. On the administrative side, the issuance of rejection slips is pending. The rejection slips are necessary to file appeals in the FTs.

What should be the way forward?

Considering all these, the next logical step should be that the Registrar General of India confers his stamp on NRC. The rejection slips have to be provided immediately for facilitating appeals to FTs.

Source: This post is based on the following articles

• “Done and Dusted” published in The Hindu on 21st September 2021.
• “NRC is final, rules Assam Foreigners’ Tribunal” published in The Hindu on 20th September 2021.