GUWAHATI: Assam minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said that former state coordinator and bureaucrat Prateek Hajela has “fundamentally prepared a wrong NRC” with financial anomalies and the state will start a new exercise to purify the document after the assembly election due next spring with approval of the Supreme Court.
“Prateek Hajela has fundamentally prepared a wrong NRC. After the elections, a new exercise will be initiated if the Supreme Court of India permits. We are asking the court’s permission for 15% revision of the NRC,” Sarma said.
Sarma alleged, “There were financial anomalies involved in the preparation of the NRC by Hajela. The Auditor General (AG) is doing an inquiry and we have given our comments. The report will be tabled in the assembly.”
After the final NRC was published in August 31 last year, Hajela got himself deputed to Madhya Pradesh on an order of the Supreme Court for a period of three years.
Sarma explained that the NRC was faulty because people in certain districts made their own NRC. “In Dhubri and Barpeta people they made their own NRC. The NRC was done under supervision of the Supreme Court but Prateek Hajela manipulated the NRC in such a manner that the thief has now become the police.”
He added, “In fact, people from Sibasagar or Jorhat should have been used to make the NRC in Dhubri and vice versa. How can someone hailing from the same village identify the other as a Bangladeshi? Prateek Hajela has fundamentally prepared a wrong NRC. “
“Prateek Hajela gave an impression that he did a good job. He created such an environment that we could not say a single word against him. Nobody from the intelligentsia said anything such was his influence. We know that even Assam chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal had to wait for four days to meet him,” Sarma said.