No law to undo NRC process but will seek review: Himanta Biswa Sarma

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Assam government will oppose in the Supreme Court some of the procedures adopted in a labyrinthine bureaucratic exercise to compile a National Register of Citizens (NRC) in the state, Assam’s finance minister Himanta Biswa Sarma told HT on Monday, but ruled out any legislative process to enforce its demands if the court were to uphold the list as final.

The NRC list, released on August 31 to update an NRC that was published in 1951, controversially excluded 1.9 million of the 33.02 million residents who had applied to prove their citizenship in a Supreme Court-monitored process.

WATCH| Day after final Assam NRC list, Centre says excluded people ‘not state-less’

Sarma said the state government could continue to ferret out illegal migrants and residents could be “pursued” if there was reasonable suspicion — regardless of their NRC status.

“If the border police pursue against someone who is in the NRC, they have to have the strongest evidence against him. You can’t stop border police from pursuing any case. They have an inherent power. They can pursue against me also. That is my understanding of the law,” Sarma said.

In Assam, election commission officials and border police can mark anyone as a suspected illegal immigrant. Poll officials can then mark them as a doubtful or D voter, and the police can refer them to foreigners’ tribunals.

Sarma also said the Modi government would likely bring a new citizenship amendment bill in the next session of Parliament to grant citizenship to a category of non-Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan who have supposedly fled to India from these countries to escape religious persecution. A key result of the bill, if passed, will be that it will enable this category of non-Muslim migrants to become Indians even if they entered the country without valid documents effectively till December 31, 2014.

The minister, who is an influential regional politician of the BJP, stressed that the government would not opt for legislative options, such as passing a law in Parliament, to enforce its views on the NRC process in the event of the top court rejecting its claims. “In this case, I am not envisaging such a thing; I am completing ruling out those kinds of interventions. The NRC is not that exceptional a case and the NRC doesn’t fall in that rarest-of-rare examples,” he said.

Sarma said that neither he nor his government had “rejected” the NRC, which was meant to fulfil a long-standing popular demand to separate citizens from illegal migrants in a state that has historically witnessed migration from neighbouring Bangladesh.

The NRC was a “step in the right direction” but it is likely that it has erroneously left out a large number of deserving people, Sarma said, without specifying their ethnicity or faith.

The state government would limit its objections to a plea, demanding re-verification of 20% of the population in the state’s border districts and 10% in the rest. This sample should be drawn from those who have been found to be valid citizens by the NRC to clear all doubts, Sarma said. “Nothing is final in this NRC till the Supreme Court accepts the NRC or till the court gives its seal of approval. The government will definitely put its views on the floor of the court. Our plea was for 20% reverification in border districts and 10% in the rest. We have to press it again,” he said.

The state government previously filed a plea in the top court to press for re-verification, but that plea was rejected when a bureaucratic office steering the whole enumeration — known as the NRC state coordinator — told the court that it had already verified 27% of the population whose citizenship documents were found eligible.

The NRC state coordinator is led by Prateek Hajela, an Indian Administrative Service officer, whom the previous government had appointed on the orders of the Supreme Court, which wanted a timebound completion of the citizens’ register.

One key lapse, according to Sarma, was that state coordinator did not allow refugee certificates and citizenship cards issued mainly to Hindu Bengalis who had fled from the erstwhile East Pakistan, when a violent civil war led to the creation of Bangladesh, leading to their exclusion. Though the court had allowed use of these documents, but with stricter scrutiny, the state coordinator argued that there was no way to verify these certificates since the issuing authorities no longer exist.

Citing his party’s own surveys, Sarma said the rate of exclusion in border districts, believed to be filled with illegal immigrants, was as low as 6-7%. In contrast, in many indigenously populated districts, like tribal-dominated Karbi Anglong, the rate of exclusion was as much as 16%.

The NRC authorities have so far not released any disaggregated data.

First Published: Sep 03, 2019 05:52 IST