Former Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi has in a series of tweets on Wednesday said many genuine Indian citizens will be left out of the draft National Register of Citizens (NRC), while seeking ‘stateless’ tag for people found to be illegal immigrants during the exercise to update the NRC.
The second and final draft is scheduled to be published on June 30.
The NRC secretariat in Guwahati has sought an extension because of time lost due to floods, specifically in southern Assam.
“I along with many others have apprehension that many genuine Indian citizens will be left out of the draft NRC. The NRC authority is working under the instance of the BJP Govt. That is why the Supreme Court had to intervene several times and monitor the whole process,” Mr. Gogoi said in a tweet.
On security issues
The veteran Congress leader, who was Chief Minister for 15 years , doubted the Sarbananda Sonowal government’s claim that the post-NRC scenario would be violence-free.
“If all Indian citizens will be included in the NRC, there should not be any possibility of breakdown of law and order or any public disturbances. But the activities of the BJP Govt. with deployment of additional paramilitary forces & mock drilling for riots is not a good sign,” he said.
Mr. Gogoi also advocated that identified foreigners should be made stateless.
The BJP, on the other hand, feared the NRC updating exercise would not be error-free and might include the names of many illegal immigrants.
“If 10 lakh foreigners are omitted from the draft NRC, there will still be another 30 lakh whose names will make their way into the list,” Atul Bora, BJP MLA from Dispur, said.