Earlier in 1951 during census, a National Register of Citizens was created, in which details of every person village wise was entered in the Register. The Data included name,age, father’s/husband’s name, houses or holdings belonging to them,means of livelihood etc etc. Accordingly then after every subsequent census this Register was updated.
During & after the war with Pakistan in 1971, Assam witnessed large scale migration from erst while East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), even after signing the Peace treaty between India & Bangladesh, the influx of migrants continued. In 1980 first time All Assam students union submitted a memorandum to the PM Indira Gandhi, seeking her urgent attention to this matte., Subsequently, Parliament enacted the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) act 1983. This act, made applicable only to Assam, was expected to identify and deport illegal migrants in the state. In the recent times there was problem of illegal Rohingya Muslim migrants from Myanmar also.
According to people of Assam , this act remained valid only on paper, and at the grass root level nothing happened, and the problem of illegal migrants continued. The matter reached Supreme Court , and the SC ordered the Registrar General of India (RGI) to take up an exercise to identify the Citizens and illegal migrants in the state of Assam, which was under SC monitoring. The Registrar received 3.29 Cr applications for the inclusion in the national Register of Citizen( NRC). After individual scrutiny and face to face interview with each applicant ,yesterday , first draft list was released by RGI, which showed whose name has been accepted for NRC. The list shows there are 40 lakhs name which have not been approved for entering in NRC. The list contains the names of only those who has filed applications before Aug 31, 2015, and no claims can be made for children born after that date.
On hearing about the list and rejection of about 40 lakhs application, Congress and other Opposition parties like TMC, SP and CPI M criticised the govt by saying that” Indian Citizens are being made refugees in their own land” They even said that it is an attempt to evict Bengalis and Biharis from Assam. But they are forgetting that NDA govt did not ordered this exercise to be taken by RGI, and it was ordered by SC way back in 2013 when UPA was in power. Now they are blaming NDA for this list, but the fact is this total survey was carried out under the supervision of SC. Another fact is, which the opposition parties and specially TMC is not saying is that, from the 40 lakhs who have not featured in the list , majority are Bangali Muslims from Bangladesh or Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar, and TMC consider Muslims as their vote banks, because harping on these issue will attract sympathy from the Muslims of West Bengal and they will vote for TMC, and in same Congress and SP wants sympathy of Muslims in other parts of country.
The sequence of this exercise taken by RGI is– In 2013 SC orders an exercise to update the NRC in Assam, between May -Aug 2015 publication of legacy data; distribution of application form took place; from Sept 1 verification process begins; Dec 31 2017 first part of draft NRC is published, Feb 17-Jun 6 2018-family Tree verification process kicks off,; Apr 2- Jul 7- Special Verification process and July 30 2018 Complete draft list is published.
Now those who are out of NRC list, they need to file a fresh claim for NRC inclusion between Aug 30 and Sept 28, 2018. After that Disposal of claims & objections to be followed by publications of final NRC.
In the list of 40 lakhs who have been found non eligible, there are names of 2.48 lakhs Doubtful voters, and those are referred to foreigners’ tribunal. Now Election Commission (EC) has to decide on the voting rights of those not included in NRC. Until then all other rights, including subsidies and eligibility for govt schemes will remain unchanged. Regarding 2.48 lakhs doubtful voters are barred from voting by EC till their names are not cleared as Indian Citizens by Tribunal.
This type of exercise was also taken up earlier but due to violence and agitations it was stopped, and after the case again went to SC and who directed RGI to start again under their supervision with adequate security .RGI did a commendable job to complete the list in 3 years, yes there will be some abnormalities in the list as the task was a huge one.If you read the press reports, there are certain cases where part of family is included and other part is not.I think RGI also expected these kinds or error to happen and that’s why they have been given time to re apply so that their credentials can be checked and verified again.
Congress which was in Power in Centre and also in state for such a long time did not do any thing concrete to check the influx of illegal migrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar and what ever they did was just an eyewash, because for them these illegal Muslim migrants were potential vote banks.
So in the end it is all political a game for these pseudo secular in Congress, TMC, SP and other parties.
What you say my friends.
Waiting for your feed backs/comments/views.
R. N. Mungale.
True. It is a political game.