Nagaland to carry out its own version of NRC from July 10

india

Updated: Jul 01, 2019 08:42 IST

The Nagaland government is set to prepare a list of all indigenous inhabitants of the state, a notification issued by home commissioner on Saturday said.

According to the notification, the exercise to prepare the Register of Indigenous Inhabitants of Nagaland (RIIN) will begin on July 10 and will be completed within 60 days.

The exercise is being undertaken to stop issuance of the Indigenous Inhabitant Certificate (IIC) to ineligible persons, the notification said.

The exercise will be conducted through an extensive survey of residents in every village and ward in the state and will be based on existing official records, it said. The survey will take into account whether an indigenous inhabitant is residing in his/her permanent residence or has moved elsewhere. Aadhar numbers, wherever applicable, will be also recorded.

Once the data of all residents is compiled, provisional lists of indigenous inhabitants will be published and authenticated by village and ward authorities, the notification said.

The lists will be published in villages and wards, and on websites of each district by September 11. A period of 30 days will be given to file claims and objections, it said.

All district deputy commissioners have been instructed to constitute teams that will conduct the exercise and inform all villages and tribal councils. The officials will adjudicate on claims and objections based on official records and evidence produced. Each indigenous inhabitant will be given a unique ID and a final list will be prepared on or before December 10.

“Once the process is complete, all indigenous inhabitants will be issued indigenous inhabitant certificates (IICs) and their existing IICs will become invalid,” said a Nagaland government official.

“No fresh IICs will be issued once the process is over and only newborns of indigenous inhabitants will be given the said certificate and their names updated in the RIIN,” he added. The RIIN will be updated every five years.

In Assam, the process to identify and weed out illegal immigrants is being done by updating the NRC, which was first prepared in 1951. Only those people who were included in the 1951 NRC or were part of subsequent voter lists till March 1971 and their direct descendants are being included in the list.

The final draft of the NRC released in July last year had excluded 40 lakh of the total 3.23 crore applicants. Another 1 lakh names were excluded this month after inaccuracies were found in their records.

The final list, which is being monitored by the Supreme Court, will be published on July 31 this year.