FIR filed against ex-NRC State Coordinator Prateek Hajela, others

GUWAHATI: Hitesh Dev Sarma, the State Coordinator of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam, lodged an FIR with the CID branch of the Assam police against former NRC State Coordinator Prateek Hajela and others for their alleged anti-national activities during the updation of the citizens’ list.

In his May 19 complaint, Dev Sarma shared the details of several loopholes in the verification of documents to match the family tree of the applicants. He suspected that some genuine documents were used to make false linkage claims with a person of pre-1971 era.

“While office verification was being done, it was noticed that the documents submitted fraudulently could not be detected merely through office and field verification, while some imposters tried to establish linkage with some genuine citizen through these fraudulently acquired documents,” the complaint reads.

“The family tree matching (FTM) was introduced as a remedy to this. In the FTM process, all the offspring of a ‘legacy person’ from whose lineage is claimed, were asked to submit their family details, which were then compared and matched through a software with the other family trees submitted by the descendants of the same legacy person,” it further says.

Hajela, who is an IAS officer, is currently serving in his home state of Madhya Pradesh.

Over 19.06 lakh of the 3.3 crore applicants were left out of the NRC. The 1951 NRC was updated based on the Assam Accord of 1985, the clause 6 of which says Bangladeshi citizens, who entered Assam after March 24, 1971, are to be detected and deported.