GUWAHATI: The Supreme Court ’s proposal to conduct a sample re-verification of at least 10% of the names included in the draft National Register of Citizens (NRC) was seen as a vindication of a demand raised by principal petitioner in the NRC case, Assam Public Works (APW).

“We asked for re-verification by a third party to correct the anomalies. Going by the court’s proposal, it appears that our prayers have been answered,” APW president Aabhijeet Sharma said.

The APW had submitted an affidavit seeking fresh verification of those who have made it to the NRC in 22 districts where the rate of inclusion is high. “Re-verification is needed in Dhubri, Kokrajhar, Chirang, South Salmara, Goalpara, Bongaigaon, Barpeta, Nalbari, Kamrup(R), Kamrup (M), Darrang, Udalguri, Sonitpur, Lakhimpur, Dhemaji, Morigaon, Nagaon, Hojai, Golaghat, Cachar, Karimganj and Hailakandi districts,” Sharma said.

The Supreme Court had earlier engaged SC advocate and convener of anti-influx body Prabajan Virodhi Manch Upamanyu Hazarika to monitor Assam’s border issues. “However, for the NRC update, the court had to depend upon the reports of the (NRC) state coordinator only. As a result, the above matters (anomalies) did not come to the court’s notice,” the petitioner said, seeking a third-party evaluation.

The APW had submitted that it had been “closely monitoring” the exercise and said that besides a large number of fake certificates used for second generation like birth certificates, most of the first generation applicants had cited electoral rolls as a link document. “The normal practice followed by illegal migrants is to enter their names in the post-1971 electoral rolls as offspring of someone whose name has figured in the pre-1971 rolls. There is no foolproof method of detecting this fraudulent activity,” Sharma said.

Associating the anomalies to the demographic constitution of these districts, the APW submitted that family tree verification could have been a foolproof method but could not be relied upon since “almost all data entry operators working in the NSKs of migrant-dominated areas are from the migrant community”. Sharma cited the engagement of a declared illegal foreigner, Khairul Islam, in NRC work in Morigaon district and added that it was possible that many such foreigners could have been involved in the process of NRC either due to oversight or as a design.

He said a software was also developed by M/S Bohniman System Ltd, through which family tree verification data already uploaded could be re-verified. “The re-verifying software was also successfully tested. But for some unknown reason, the state coordinator of NRC did not allow the re-verification,” he submitted in his affidavit.

