Supreme Court on Tuesday lashed out at centre saying it is getting impression that the Ministry of Home Affairs is out to destroy the ongoing NRC work in Assam. A two-judge bench of the Supreme Court comprising CJI Ranjan Gogoi & Justice Rohinton F Nariman today came down heavily on the Centre after it sought suspension of NRC exercise for two weeks during Lok Sabha polls from the time of last date of withdrawal of nominations till the date of poll.
The centre informed court that at present 167 companies of Central paramilitary forces are engaged in NRC work which needs to be withdrawn during elections. This time centre will require 2700 companies for deployment during elections. In 2014 they had deployed 2500 companies. However, Centre's request was promptly denied by the Supreme Court. SC has requested Election commission to ensure that 3457 officers working in different posts in the state executive are allowed to continue and not be transferred so that NRC work can be completed by July 31.
CJI said that both election and NRC work can go together. SC questioned the need of withdrawing armed police companies for election saying, "You have 3000 combined armed police companies. You need 2700 companies for LS polls. Assam NRC work requires 167 companies. So what is the problem?" KK Venugopal said that security of the country is involved. He also said that election will be held in a charged situation hence conducting NRC work at that time will be difficult. However, the CJI-led bench was in no mood to listen to this line of argument.
SC said that if the government wants, it has ways to ensure that NRC exercise can be done during the election also.
Earlier on January 24, Supreme Court said the July 31, 2019 deadline to finalise the National Register of Citizens for Assam cannot be extended and asked the state government, the NRC co-ordinator and the EC to ensure that the upcoming general elections do not slow down the process.
A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi asked the NRC state coordinator Prateek Hajela, Secretary of the Election Commission and the Assam chief secretary to conduct a meeting within a week to ensure that the NRC finalisation process and the upcoming parliamentary elections go "hand-in-hand" and there is no dearth of government officials for either process.Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Assam Government, told the bench, also comprising Justice R F Nariman, that such a meeting would be held and the court would be apprised of the deliberations.
The draft National Register of Citizens for Assam was published on July 30, 2018 in which the 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.Hajela said that out of about 40 lakh persons, who were left out of draft NRC, 36.2 lakh persons have filed claims with the authorities for inclusion of their names in the final NRC. He also said that around 2 lakh objections have been received against those whose names have been included in the draft NRC.
With PTI inputs