Assam minister lauds Amit Shah over nationwide NRC drive

Guwahati, Nov 20 (SocialNews.XYZ) Assam finance minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Wednesday lauded Union Home Minister Amit Shah who said that there will be a pan-India National Register of Citizens (NRC) and that Assam will naturally be a part of the process.

Shah while replying to a question in the Rajya Sabha said that the NRC was updated in Assam under a special Act.

"But there will be a process of NRC across the country and that time it will be naturally carried out in Assam," Shah said.

"We have not accepted the NRC. There were lots of discrepancies in the NRC "while some non-citizens made it to the NRC, some genuine citizens were left out. In this regard, we have informally urged the Home Minister to go for a fresh NRC. Today, we are happy that the Home Minister made it official," said Sarma.

"We have urged the Union Home Minister to reject the NRC which was updated in Assam," Sarma said.

"We believe that there should be one NRC for the entire country with one cut off date. We are not saying that it has to be 1951 or 1971 or 1961, whatever it is, it should be the same for the entire country," said Sarma.

He said that the current NRC had not satisfied anyone in Assam -- the All Assam Students' Union, everyone has spoken against the NRC published on August 31.

The Minister's statement assumes significance considering the fact that an estimated Rs 1,500 crore have been spent so far to update the NRC in Assam through a rigorous process that also witnessed the engagement of over 50,000 state government employees.

A total of 3,30,27,661 persons applied to the NRC authorities for registering their names in the registry through 68,37,660 application forms. Out of these 3,11,21,004 persons were found eligible for inclusion of their names in the final NRC leaving out 19,06,657 persons.

Source: IANS