The final list of the updated National Register of Citizens for Assam was published on Saturday morning. Of the 3.3 crore people who applied to be included in the NRC, the new list includes 3,11,21,004 people and excludes 19,06,657 people, including those who did not apply.
The figures were provided by Prateek Hajela, state coordinator of the NRC. The number of exclusions is far less than the figure of over 40 lakh people that many had feared.
The publication of the updated NRC marks the fulfilment of a demand made for decades by Assamese groups.
The final NRC list was uploaded on at 10am. Residents of Assam can check their status on the NRC website or the NRC seva kendras in the state.
The first draft of the updated NRC was published at midnight on December 31, 2017. Of the 3.29 crore people who submitted documents to be included, 1.9 crore were listed as bona fide citizens. In July 2018, the final draft of the NRC was published, which excluded over 40 lakh applicants. Then, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had alleged that ethnic Bengalis had been unfairly left out.
The state government had tightened security across Assam ahead of the publication of the NRC, with a ban on assembly of four or more people in place in multiple areas. On Friday, Chief Minister Sarbanananda Sonowal had reassured people in the state that those excluded by the NRC would not be immediately “termed” as foreigners. Earlier in the week, Sonowal's government had announced legal aid would be extended to those excluded people who were not able to appeal their exclusion.
Assam DGP Kuladhar Saikia said on Friday the Central government had deployed 51 additional companies of paramilitary personnel to assist in maintaining law and order in the state. "The law and order situation in the state is normal and the NRC publication will be a peaceful event. Besides Assam Police personnel, there are 167 companies of CRPF, BSF, ITBP and other paramilitary forces deployed in the state,” Saikia told mediapersons.
Background to NRC
Assam is the first state to have updated the NRC since 1951, when the NRC was originally created after the census that year. The roots of the demand for a new NRC can be traced to the influx of lakhs of refugees and illegal immigrants from what is now Bangladesh in the 1960s and 1971. This had sparked the Assam Movement in 1979, which demanded expulsion of the immigrants from Bangladesh. The Supreme Court in 2013 issued an order for the NRC to be updated in Assam.
