Washington : An Indian American Muslim advocacy group has called for an immediate suspension of the National Registry of Citizens (NRC) in Assam until irregularities resulting in four million people being excluded from the list are resolved. The publication of the draft NRC in Assam has led to bitterness as people who had applied have not found a place in the Register touted to be a proof of Assamese identity.
“The ethnic group that is the worst victim of this mass disenfranchisement is the Bengali-speaking Muslim community in Assam, accused of being ‘infiltrators’, though they are Indian citizens,” said the Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC).
Relatives of former President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed were among those at risk of becoming stateless. “The fact this is an exercise in subversion of democracy and has a clearly bigoted, discriminatory agenda, is reflected in the exclusion of the relatives of the former President of India,” said IAMC president Ahsan Khan, adding “The entire programme should be suspended till the criteria for exclusion are clearly defined.”
International bodies like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have expressed concern. “It is possible the process will arbitrarily deprive people, who have lived in India for decades, of their nationality,” amnesty said.
IAMC called on the Government of India “not to allow religious differences to define the socio-political landscape of the country, where something as basic as a citizen’s right to be called a citizen of the country is arbitrarily snatched away”.