SC refuses to defer NRC deadline any further

New Delhi, Feb 5 (IANS) The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to relax the July 31 deadline for publication of Assam's final National Register of Citizens (NRC) and disapproved the Centre's plea for putting the updation work on hold post-announcement of Lok Sabha elections by the Election Commission.

"The Ministry of Home Affairs is bent upon that NRC work is not carried out. The entire effort of the Ministry is to destroy this process. If you want NRC work to go on, there are 1,001 ways of doing it. The government is not co-operating," Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi said.

His remarks came after Attorney General K.K. Venugopal apprised the apex court of the Centre's stand that work on NRC updation should be put on hold after the Lok Sabha elections are announced.

Brushing aside the Centre's request, the bench, comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Rohinton Nariman, asked the Commission to examine if it could hold the elections in the state by sparing 3,457 officers who would continue with the NRC updation work.

Expressing "disappointment" over the stand of the Central government and making it clear that they are not extending the deadline, Chief Justice Gogoi said: "Is it too much to ask the government of India for both works to go on? Both exercises are important for the country."

Attorney General K.K. Venugopal told the court that in 2014, 2,500 companies of the Central Armed Police Force (CAPF) were deployed and in 2019, it is likely to go up to 2,700.

Putting forward the requirement of CAPF for conducting the Lok Sabha elections, the Attorney General (AG) told the court that they would require withdrawing some of those currently posted in Assam.

Besides the deployment of CAPF companies for the election duties, the AG told the court that they require them for guarding the borders.

Noting a statement by the Joint Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs that there are 3,000 CAPF companies, CJI Gogoi said that even if 2,700 of them are deployed for election duty, still there are enough to take care of other requirements.

Contrary to the Centre's position to put on hold the entire exercise of updation of the NRC in Assam after the announcement of elections till they are completed, State Co-ordinator of NRC Prateek Hajela urged the court to reschedule by two weeks the updation work of NRC which would involve hearing of claims and objections.

He said that with elections on, the process of holding hearings on claims and objections is also likely to generate passions.

The top court in the last hearing of the matter on January 24 had directed for convening of a meeting of the Assam Chief Secretary, Election Commission and the State Co-ordinator of NRC to find a way to avoid any clash of work involving preparation of final NRC of Assam and holding of the Lok Sabha elections as it extended the publication of final NRC till July 31.

Making it clear that the work on the updation of NRC and the holding of Lok Sabha elections had to go together without any of the two coming each other's way, the court had then asked the Election Commission, Assam Chief Secretary and Hajela to "devise a way to deal with the situation".

"What should be the optimum number of state government employees currently engaged in NRC work who can be legitimately continued in such work and what should be the number of such employees who can be taken out for election duty without affecting the NRC work is a matter that has to be sorted out between the State Coordinator, state government and the Election Commission," the court had said in its order.