GUWAHATI: The Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), an advocacy organization of Indian Muslims in the US, has called for the immediate suspension of the National Register of Citizens in Assam saying the ethnic group of Bengali-speaking Muslims, who are Indian citizens, have been excluded from the draft list.

The organization in a statement said the exercise should be suspended “until irregularities that have resulted in four million people being excluded from the list are resolved.”

The group, which describes itself as an advocacy group dedicated to safeguarding India’s pluralist and tolerant ethos, stated that international bodies such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch as well as civil society institutions across India have expressed concern about the process that could render the four million people stateless.

“The fact that this is an exercise in subversion of democracy and has a clearly bigoted, discriminatory agenda, is reflected in the exclusion of the relatives of the former President of India,” said president of IAMC, Ahsan Khan. “The entire program should be suspended until the criteria for exclusion are clearly defined,” he added in the statement.

The IAMC went on to say, “The stark contrast between the government’s warm welcome of the Hindu migrants from Bangladesh and its openly hostile attitude to Rohingya refugees reeks of bigotry and a penchant to view some refugees as less deserving of humanitarian treatment only due to the religion they practice.”

The group, quoting local organizations here, accused the Assam government of intervening in the updating exercise that was under the supervision of the Supreme Court.

“IAMC has called on the central government not to allow religious differences to define the socio-political landscape of the country, where something as basic as a citizen’s right to be called a citizen of the country is arbitrarily snatched away,” the statement said.

