National Register of Citizens (NRC) list was published on Saturday weeding out 19 lakh individuals and including over three crore persons in the final draft. However, the list is marred by major discrepancies. Many Indians were left out from the list. The ruling BJP has openly criticized the process for NRC, saying the party has lost all hopes in NRC. On the other side, the saffron party has demanded a similar exercise for Delhi. The NRC in Assam was carried out to identify genuine Indian citizens and foreigners.
“BJP supports the NRC exercise, but we feel that there are certain lacunae that should have been plugged. The centre and the Assam government have requested the Supreme Court to allow 20 per cent reverification in districts that border Assam and 10 per cent in others,” the BJP leader Himanta Biswa Sarma said.
Over 19 lakh people were left out of the NRC list published on Saturday morning, and they are now required to prove their citizenship in order to avoid government action. The exercise, which has been going on years now, was aimed at weeding out illegal migrants who have settled down in the state over the course of decades.
Mr Sarma said that Hindu migrants should not have been left out of the list. “A small portion of Hindu migrants have been left out of the list. They had their own refugee certificates, but that was not taken into account. Anyway, the BJP is committed to passing the Citizenship Amendment Bill in the next parliament session,” he added.
The Citizenship Amendment Bill, intended to make it easier for non-Muslim immigrants from neighbouring states such as Pakistan and Bangladesh to become Indian nationals, has been termed as “communal” and “discriminatory” by social activists as well as opposition parties.
Mr Sarma, however, did not subscribe to this view. Claiming that minorities are persecuted in Muslim-majority Pakistan and Bangladesh, he said: “If you believe that giving shelter to Hindu migrants who have been thrown out of the country because of religion is communal, then I don’t know what’s the definition of communalism and secularism.”
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