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Publishing of NRC list 1st step, lot to be done: Abhijeet Sharma

Sharma says his dream will be realised the day a non-Indian will finally be shorn of his right to vote in this country

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Locals lined up at NRC centres on Monday, when the 1st list was released
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Abhijeet Sharma of the Assam Public Works (APW), petitioner in the National Register of Citizens (NRC) case in the Supreme Court, says there's nothing to be happy about the draft list. Sharma, whose writ petition in the Supreme Court in January 2009 has led to the upgradation of the NRC in Assam, says in their scheme of things, the publishing of the list is just the first step, and that there's a lot more work to be done.

Sharma's dream is to see an Assam bereft of what he terms as 'non-Indians', an idea that has stuck with a lot of Assam's upper class Hindu people, but one that remains tightly contested by the state's religious minorities. Sharma says his dream will be realised the day a non-Indian will finally be shorn of his right to vote in this country.

APW, formed in November 2007, identifies itself as a social organisation that was formed "to fight the extremists and their killings of innocent people in the state", says Sharma. While the demand to upgrade the NRC was first formally put forward by the All Assam Student Union (AASU) since the early 1980s despite several such demands by the state's nationalists, it was the APW's petition that led to the apex court directing the Centre to upgrade the list. The petition wanted the names of over 41 lakh names in the voter list of Assam to be investigated and a fresh list to be issued.

Sharma, however, attributes the credit to Pradip Kumar Bhuyan, an octogenarian, who drafted the petition. Bhuyan, founder of Guwahati's prominent Faculty Higher Secondary School, was an alumnus of IIT Kharagpur and has drafted the petition in the Subansiri big dam case at the National Green Tribunal (NGT) in which Sharma is the petitioner. There are also reports of the reclusive Bhuyan and his wife spending over Rs 60 lakh on the case.

Sharma recalls the day in the peak of Delhi's summer of July 20 in 2009, when along with Bhuyan they filed the petition in the court of T Satasivam. "Leaning across the pillar outside court number 1, he looked at me and said, 'Assam will now be saved'," says Sharma.

From how things have unfolded, only time will tell how much of saving Assam needs.

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