New Delhi: The Supreme Court Tuesday extended the deadline for publication of final National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam by a month to August 31 while rejecting the pleas seekingpermission for 20 per cent sample re-verification.
The Centre and the Assam government sought permission for sample re-verification to find out wrongful inclusions and exclusions of persons in the NRC.
The order was passed by a bench, comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice R F Nariman, which perused the reports filed by the Assam NRC coordinator Prateek Hajela.
The Centre and the Assam government stands were advanced by Attorney General K K Venugopal and Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, respectively. Both the governments had on July 19 told the top court that "India cannot be the refugee capital of the world" and sought extension of its deadline of July 31 to complete the Assam NRC. They sought directions to conduct sample reverification to quell a growing perception that many illegal immigrants may have infiltrated the NRC especially in districts bordering Bangladesh. The court had earlier reiterated that the deadline would not be extended. Both the governments told the apex court that several lakh people have been wrongfully included in the NRC, specially in districts bordering Bangladesh due to the involvement of local officers in the massive exercise.
Assam NRC: A brief chronology -
1951 First-ever NRC of India published
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1979 Anti-foreigners’ movement started in Assam
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January 1980 AASU submitted the first memorandum demanding to update of NRC
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August 14, 1985 Historic Assam Accord was signed
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1990 AASU submitted modalities to update NRC to Centre as well State Government
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1999 Centre took the first formal decision to update the NRC as per the Assam Accord
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2005 In the presence of then PM Manmohan Singh, the resolution was adopted to update the NRC within September 2007
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2009 Assam Public Work, an NGO filed a case in Supreme Court claiming that 41 lakh foreigners were included in the electoral rolls of Assam
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April 2010 Then Union Home Secretary held a tripartite meeting to conduct a pilot project to update NRC in Barpeta and Chaygaon revenue circles
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July 2010 Chaygaon pilot project was successful; however, violence halted the Barpeta project.
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2010 onwards After Barpeta violence, AASU and 26 other ethnic organisations started joint movement for NRC update
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2015 NRC authorities were given the deadline of December 31, 2015 to complete the NRC update
December 31, 2015 Deadline set by SC to publish the NRC was missed and since then the apex Court has been constantly monitoring the update
Mid 2017 Supreme Court had set December 31, 2017 deadline for publication of draft NRC
December 31, 2017 First draft of the NRC for Assam was published The first draft of Assam NRC was published on the intervening night of December 31, 2017 and January 1 in accordance with the top court’s direction. Names of 1.9 crore people out of the 3.29 crore applicants were incorporated then.
July 30, 2018 Second and final draft of the state’s National Register of Citizens (NRC) was published The draft Assam NRC was published on July 30, 2018 in which the names of 2.89 crore of the 3.29 crore people were included. The names of 40,70,707 people did not figure in the list. Of these, 37,59,630 names have been rejected and the remaining 2,48,077 are on hold.
August 1, 2018 Supreme Court ruled that the Assam NRC was only a draft, and hence it cannot be the basis of any action by any authority against anyone.
August 1, 2018 The Chief Election Commissioner OP Rawat clarified that the electoral roll is governed by a separate law and exclusion from the final NRC would not mean “automatic removal” from Assam’s voters’ list.
August 17, 2018 The Supreme Court asked the Assam National Register of Citizens (NRC) coordinator to submit the data of district-wise percentage of the population excluded from the NRC draft in the state.
September 5, 2018 Supreme court had ordered that any one of the 10 of a total 15 documents provided in List-A of the NRC claim form can be used by the claimants to prove legacy.
08.05.2019: The Supreme Court made it clear once again on Wednesday that it will not extend even by a day the July 31 deadline for finalisation of the National Register of Citizens in Assam and gave “free hand” to the coordinator to deal with complaints.
26 June 2019 Additional NRC Draft Exclusion list published on June 26, 2019 consisting of 1,02,462 persons' names.
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