The Supreme Court on Thursday fixed December 15 deadline for people to file claims and objections for inclusion of names in the draft Nation Register of Citizens in Assam.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi also allowed claimants for Assam NRC to rely on five more documents which were earlier objected to by NRC coordinator.

These five documents are: NRC of 1951, voter list of 1966, voter list of 1971, refugee registration certificate till 1971 and ration card issued till 1971.

Until now, 10 legacy documents could be used for inclusion and exclusion in the draft NRC, which should have been issued by various authorities and corporations since midnight of March 24, 1971.

The Supreme Court had asked all stakeholders to submit their views on a recent report by Prateek Hajela, the state coordinator of NRC, where he explained why only 10 of the 15 documents that were initially accepted to establish residence in Assam prior to March 25, 1971, could be submitted afresh in the claims and objections phase.

Hajela cited some instances of how the additional five documents, including ration cards, refugee registration and citizenship certificates, can be forged and extracts of the 1951 NRC and electoral rolls up to March 25, 1971, also called legacy data, could be misused to get illegal migrants into NRC.

The top court also fixed timeline for issuance of notice as January 15 to claimants and verification of documents as February 1.

The final draft NRC list was published on July 30 in which names of 2.89 crore of the 3.29 crore people were included. The names of 40,70,707 people did not figure in the list. Of these, 37,59,630 names have been rejected and the remaining 2,48,077 are on hold.

First Published: Nov 01, 2018 15:22 IST