People wait to check their names on the final draft of the state's National Register of Citizens after it was ... Read More

GUWAHATI: Registrar General of India (RGI), Sailesh, who released the draft National Register of Citizens of Assam here on Monday said that the over three-year-long exercise was the biggest ever enumeration exercise in the country, and perhaps in the world.

The registry of Indian citizens, who are residents of Assam, has been updated by RGI, 67 years after the copy of Independent India’s first population census report of 1951 was renamed as NRC by the ministry of home affairs in 1961 for use by Assam Police to detect and deport infiltrators from Bangladesh. This document is found only in Assam in the country.

“The exercise of NRC in its scale, size and complexity is unprecedented. It has no parallel in the country, perhaps in the world,” Sailesh said.

“The process of the NRC update in Assam differs from the rest of the country and is governed by the Citizenship Act, 1955 and The Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003 with midnight of March 24, 1971 as the cut-off date for determining citizenship as provided in Assam Accord,” Sailesh added.

“It was a mammoth exercise involving around 52,000 state government employees to carry out statutory works for a prolonged period of more than three years. The entire process of the updating was meticulously carried out in an objective and transparent manner,” Sailesh said.

Unlike the creation of the first NRC by an order of MHA after unstopped infiltration from Bangladesh became the biggest worry for New Delhi, its update was a fallout of the Assam Accord signed at the end of a six-year long anti-foreigners movement against illegal immigrants, which was spearheaded by All Assam Students Union .

The RGI stopped the two pilot projects launched in 2010 that was marred by violence by All Assam Minority Students’’ Union in Barpeta, the Supreme Court stepped in three years later following a petition filed by an NGO, and ordered the updating under its supervision. The actual process started only in 2015.

Unlike population census where enumerators carry out door-to-door surveys, the NRC process required applicants to come to NRC seva kendras or take to online methods to file their applications. The process of scrutiny of the particulars submitted by the applicants later involved hour to house field verification as well as hearings.

The exercise also gave people of Assam a digitized database of their legacy data, which is the collection of the 1951 NRC and electoral rolls up to midnight of 24th March, 1971. This database became the game changer for the authorities to find the eligibility of the applicants. Every applicant had to provide the proof of residence in Assam of himself or his or her ancestors prior to midnight of 24th March, 1971 for inclusion in NRC.

