GUWAHATI: Facebook and Google have thrown their weight behind the Assam government's three-year-long National Register of Citizens ( NRC ) update exercise. The internet giants are countering online campaigns directed against the exercise - with the biggest being the one led by the US-based avaaz .org, which has equated the process of identifying legal citizens in Assam with the persecution of Rohingya Muslims in neighbouring Myanmar.

The exercise to update the NRC of 1951, undertaken by the Registrar General of India under the supervision of the Supreme Court, will give the first count of illegal migrants in Assam, where the issue has been a sensitive one for decades. The updated NRC will be published on July 30 - the second draft after the first was published on December 31 midnight last year.

