New Delhi: The Supreme Court today directed for the re-verification of those people who were excluded from the draft National Register of Citizens (NRC) published recently. They form a total of 10 percent who were excluded from the list.
A bench comprising of Justices Ranjan Gogoi and R F Nariman said that the order of re-verification for those who were excluded from NRC was to get a “sample survey” meant for the court’s satisfaction and the actual schedule would be decided later on.
The top court also deferred the date of August 30 which was according to the schedule for receipt of all kinds of claims and objections to the draft NRC, as it went on to point out certain contradictions in the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) of the Centre for filing them.
The apex court also raised several doubts over the issue of Centre’s proposal to allow a claimant to change his legacy document for inclusion into the draft.
The NRC list’s second draft was published on July 30 this year in which only 2.89 crore people were included out of a total 3.29 crores. There is no name available for 40,70,707 people in the given list. And even out of these 37,59,630 names have been rejected and the left out 2,48,077 are said to be on hold.
The Supreme Court had made it crystal clear in its July 31 ruling that there will not a coercive action by concerned authorities against more than 40 lakh people for the reason that their names do not figure in the NRC while taking into consideration that it was only a draft as of now.
During the same time, the apex court ruled that the Centre needs to come up with formulated modalities and the SOPs which shall include timelines to decide claims and objections that arise out of the publication of the draft.
Earlier to that, the Supreme Court had also asked the coordinator of Assam NRC to bring before it the related data of district-wise percentage of the population which was excluded from the draft in the eastern state.
As on August 14, the government at the center had informed the top court that it will create distinct IDs by taking biometric details of more than 40 lakh people by filing claims and objections with regard to the NRC.
It also said that, soon after the publication of the NRC final list, all those people whose names will be figured in it will be issued with usual Aadhaar number as applicable to legal residents of this country.
In accordance with the Supreme Court’s direction, the first such draft of the NRC for Assamese state was published on the intervening night of December 31 and January 1. In that draft, out of the 3.29 crores applicants, only 1.9 crore people were incorporated in it.
Assam is the only state having an NRC which was actually first prepared in 1951, as it saw an influx of people from Bangladesh since the early 20th century.
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