GUWAHATI: A year ago, IIT graduate-turned-bureaucrat Prateek Hajela (50) was portrayed as an asura (demon) being slain by goddess Durga at a rally in Bengali-majority Silchar for being the reason their citizenship was at stake. On Saturday, which marked the culmination of the six-year-long exercise to update the National Register of Citizens in Assam, Hajela still remained a villain - this time because of the "small" exclusion figure.

Hajela, a 1995-batch IAS officer, is the state coordinator for Assam NRC exercise. He has been the BJP-led Assam government's bete noire ever since the Supreme Court rejected its plea for re-verification of documents submitted by the people in the districts bordering Bangladesh, after Hajela reported that he had already completed "incidental re-verification" of 27% of the applications.

The state government went to the extent of accusing Hajela - its own officer - as he belonged to the Assam-Meghalaya cadre, of keeping it in the dark about the NRC updation progress.

Hajela has said little on these accusations though. His last interaction with the media was on July 30, 2018, when the final draft NRC was presented. Since then, he has kept himself away from the media following an SC stricture. Even the publication of the final NRC on Saturday was a low-key affair, with Hajela reaching out to the media with a statement released on official social media handles.

Despite this, his name rang out in the streets of Guwahati as people defied prohibitory orders and protested against the final list.

Born in Bhopal, Hajela was first posted in Assam as an assistant commissioner in Cachar district in 1996. In September 2013, he was appointed commissioner and secretary of the state home and political department by the then Congress government and also took over as the state coordinator of the NRC updation process as the nodal officer of the Registrar General of India.

In a Facebook post in 2018, Hajela hinted at the difficult circumstances under which he was working. "In any endeavour where the intentions are pure and as are the ways and means, every obstruction is an opportunity.. ."

What followed were waves of verbal attack on Hajela from BJP. On July 24, the state BJP said Hajela was working under the direction of "certain forces" to "publish a faulty NRC with names of illegal foreigners in it".

On Saturday, all Hajela offered was a brief statement. "All decisions of inclusion and exclusion are taken by statutory officers. The entire process... has been meticulously carried out in an objective and transparent manner. Adequate opportunity of being heard has been given to all persons at every stage of the process," he said.

