An umbrella body of 14 Assam-based Bengali organisations have demanded a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation into alleged “buying and selling” of legacy data during the exercise to update the National Register of Citizens (NRC).
The Bengali Joint Coordination Committee, Asom, submitted this demand in a memorandum to Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal on Friday, citing NRC State Coordinator Prateek Hajela’s statement before the Supreme Court.
According to Mr. Hajela’s statement, legacy had been made a commodity for trading in the process of NRC, the memorandum said. “This implies illegal migrants had their names included in the NRC with such legacies or family trees in connivance with senior officials of NRC who verified the documents,” it said.
“Legacy trading is a crime whose investigation should be handed over to the CBI so that the culprits are booked,”the memorandum added.
Members of the committee, who have been demonstrating outside the Assam Assembly, claimed that “irregularities” and “malpractices” committed in the NRC updating process led to the names of more than 1.5 million genuine Indian citizens being excluded from the complete NRC draft published on July 30.
The committee said that the officials engaged in exercise flouted norms and procedures in the absence of any monitoring and supervision despite an order by the apex court