GUWAHATI: Stung by the outcome of the final National Register of Citizens (NRC), BJP leader and state finance ministerHimanta Biswa Sarmasuggested on Monday a three-pronged strategy, including a fresh round of enumeration of citizens in the state when the national register is prepared as proposed by Union home minister Amit Shah, to rectify the “anomalies” in thefinal NRCpublished on August 31.
Talking to a local news channel on the way forward, Sarma said there are “three windows” to achieve the goal. “The first is the Supreme Court is yet to approve the final NRC list, and if we can act fast and unitedly, we can convince the apex court on doing a re-verification. The SC is very reasonable,” he added.
There is, however, one hurdle: stakeholders not happy with the outcome of the final NRC are not on the same platform.
“We all must unite and leave our ego behind. The All Assam Students’ Union (Aasu), APW (Assam Public Works, the principle petitioner) and the state government should get together and petition the SC, though separately, with one common prayer for re-verification. We are asking for 20% re-verification, Aasu might want 30% … we can go with one figure and convince the apex court, “the minister said. “Let us all sit and discuss. Each one of us would find different anomalies in the NRC. We can tabulate all these and move the Supreme Court. If the court gets the right feedback, all pointing towards the same set of anomalies, we can push for putting the NRC on hold, “he added.
“If at least one block, if re-verified, doesn’t have errors, we will accept the NRC. if there is an error, which we believe there will be, than the NRC in totality should be reviewed, “said Sarma.
BJP, Aasu, APW and the state government have all rejected the final NRC, saying that it is not error-free.
Sarma’s second suggestion is to include Assam in the exercise for a national register. “Amit Shah has said that after the Citizenship Act is amended in the context of West Bengal, there will be a national register of citizens. Though that has not been decided yet, we will press the central government so that the national exercise includes Assam as Because the just-published NRC had its application submission cut-off date of 2015 … it is 2019 now and so the persons born after this date would have to be included too. “
The third strategy involves a matter under the jurisdiction of the state government. “The state border police have an inherent power of referring suspected foreigners to the tribunals (sic). This power has not been taken away. We will urge the CM to immediately re-activate the border police,” he said.
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