[caption id="attachment_283513" align="aligncenter" width="500"]
Union Home Minister Amit Shah speaks in the Rajya Sabha during the ongoing Winter Session of the Parliament, in New Delhi on Wednesday.[/caption]
New Delhi, Nov. 20 (IANS): The National Register of Citizens (NRC) will be implemented nationwide, said Union Home Minister Amit Shah in Rajya Sabha on Wednesday, asserting that no person from any religion need to be afraid of it.
“The NRC exercise is monitored by the Supreme Court. No religion has been targeted or isolated during the NRC exercise,” said Shah responding to a query of Congress leader Syed Nasir Hussain. The MP asked whether the NRC provides citizenship to immigrants of six non-Muslim faiths.
Shah said NRC and The Citizenship Amendment Bill 2016, which lapsed on June 3, 2019, are two different issues and both should not be seen through one prism.
Shah said people whose names are missing from the NRC can approach tribunals formed at the tehsil level. The Assam government will provide financial help to those who don’t have the money to file pleas, he said. Shah said the government would bear the cost of hiring a lawyer.
The updated final NRC, which validates genuine Indian citizens, has left out over 19 lakh applicants in Assam. Most of these are people who have not produced required documents to prove their claims and have the option of appealing to Foreigners’ Tribunals and subsequently approach the courts.
In Assam, the NRC aims to identify illegal immigrants who entered the state and settled after March 25, 1971.
Assam minister lauds Amit Shah over nationwide NRC drive
Assam finance minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Wednesday lauded Union Home Minister Amit Shah who said that there will be a pan-India National Register of Citizens (NRC) and that Assam will naturally be a part of the process.
Shah while replying to a question in the Rajya Sabha said that the NRC was updated in Assam under a special Act.
“But there will be a process of NRC across the country and that time it will be naturally carried out in Assam,” Shah said.
“We have not accepted the NRC. There were lots of discrepancies in the NRC “while some non-citizens made it to the NRC, some genuine citizens were left out. In this regard, we have informally urged the Home Minister to go for a fresh NRC. Today, we are happy that the Home Minister made it official,” said Sarma.
“We have urged the Union Home Minister to reject the NRC which was updated in Assam,” Sarma said.
“We believe that there should be one NRC for the entire country with one cut off date. We are not saying that it has to be 1951 or 1971 or 1961, whatever it is, it should be the same for the entire country,” said Sarma.
He said that the current NRC had not satisfied anyone in Assam -- the All Assam Students’ Union, everyone has spoken against the NRC published on August 31.
The Minister’s statement assumes significance considering the fact that an estimated INR 1,500 crore have been spent so far to update the NRC in Assam through a rigorous process that also witnessed the engagement of over 50,000 state government employees.
A total of 3,30,27,661 persons applied to the NRC authorities for registering their names in the registry through 68,37,660 application forms. Out of these 3,11,21,004 persons were found eligible for inclusion of their names in the final NRC leaving out 19,06,657 persons.
