NRC: Supreme Court comes down heavily on Assam officials for speaking to the media

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court SC ) on Wednesday again deferred the process of receiving claims and objections with regard to the final draft of Assam's National Register of Citizens (NRC) until further orders.The final draft of Assam's NRC was released July 30. It said 2.89 crore of 3.29 crore people who applied are considered citizens of the country. Of the more than 40 lakh people not in the final draft, as many as 37.59 lakh names have been rejected and 2.48 lakh names have been put on hold.The process for making claims and objections by those left out was set to begin on August 30 and continue till September 28. Last Tuesday too, the apex court deferred the receipt of claims and objections to Assam's final draft of the NRC from the earlier scheduled August 30.NRC coordinator Prateek Hajela on Wednesday submitted a report to an SC bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi and R F Nariman suggesting that only 10 of the 15 documents originally permitted to prove citizenship be allowed to be filed with claims and objections by the people whose names have been left out of the final NRC draft.The SC asked the Centre and other stakeholders to respond to this suggestion of the NRC coordinator within two weeks. It then scheduled the next hearing for September 19.When the attorney general forcefully said that the Centre has a larger interest to look after and should be given a copy of NRC coordinator's report to articulate its response, the bench told him that it is not necessary to give a copy to Centre at this stage.Last Tuesday, the reason the top court cited for the deferment is that it had some doubts about the contradictions in procedure for the receipt of claims and objections. It also said it would also like to conduct a sample re-verification of 10 per cent of NRC data, district-wise, by an independent team to satisfy itself that no error has crept into draft NRC.The apex court also sought a report from NRC state coordinator Hajela about why those claiming inclusion be allowed to give fresh documents that could change their earlier claimed family tree.