GUWAHATI: At a time when the process of upgrading National Register of Citizens (NRC) is underway, Assam Congress submitted a memorandum to the State Coordinator, NRC on 2nd June 2018.
In the memorandum, State Congress has highlighted that when the Gauhati High Court took suo moto cognizance regarding the validity of linkage certificates issued by Gaon Panchayat secretaries, the State NRC authority neither contested the matter nor placed important facts before the High Court.
As a result, linkage certificates were held to have no statutory sanctity in the eyes of the law despite the fact that these were initially considered as valid documents as per the modalities already decided by the stakeholders.
The memorandum stated about 48 lakh married women were affected by the judgment which came about because of poor representation by the State NRC Authority.
Subsequently, the said judgment was challenged before the Supreme Court, which set aside the High Court order and held that certificates issued by Gaon Panchayat Secretaries were valid documents.
Further, the SCNRC, vide office communication dated 02-05-2018, issued an instruction in respect of ineligibility of the blood relatives of Declared Foreigners (DF) for inclusion in the NRC. The said communication was shown to be issued with reference to the order dated 02-05-2017 which was passed by the Gauhati High Court. However, the High Court did not pass that order in the context of the NRC. Rather, it was passed in the context of the Foreigners Act.
Further, the NRC process and the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016 have no connection as the NRC update process flowed out of the Assam Accord of 1985 and is underway under the supervision of the Supreme Court, while the move to grant citizenship to Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist and Parsee refugees from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan is a comparatively recent step of the Central Government with no reference to the Assam Accord.
Even the Chief Minister of Assam, Sarbananda Sonowal, had accepted the fact that the NRC and the Bill were not linked, although of late he has stated that he would comment on the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill only after publication of the final draft of the NRC. In short, the NRC is an exercise to determine who is an Indian citizen as per the provisions of the Assam Accord.
Therefore, anyone whose name is in the voters’ list prior to 1971, along with the names of those who can prove their citizenship, should be included in the NRC.