The court also pushed the deadline of filing of claims from November 25 to December 15 with the exercise of verification expected to go on till April 2019.
In a major relief to over 40 lakh persons residing in Assam whose names did not figure in the first draft of National Register of Citizens (NRC), the Supreme Court on Thursday allowed the excluded persons to rely on five additional documents including ration card, electoral roll and refugee registration certificate, considered vital to decide their claim for inclusion in the state citizenship roll. The court also pushed the deadline of filing of claims from November 25 to December 15 with the exercise of verification expected to go on till April 2019.
A bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice RF Nariman felt that this order was necessary to give one more opportunity to those persons who could be genuine exclusions. However, the court added a rider that while considering the five additional documents, the scrutiny must be a three-fold vigorous exercise to weed out claims based on fake documents.
Out of 3.29 crore citizens in the state who applied for enrolment in NRC, the names of over 40.7 lakh got rejected as they were unable to show their family tree legacy prior to March 24, 1971. The documents to satisfy residence that were accepted in the first round included land documents (registered sale deed or land rights), permanent residential certificate, Passport, Life Insurance of India (LIC) policy, any license or certificate issued by any Government authority, service/employment record under government/public sector undertaking, bank or post office account of relevant period, birth certificate, education certificate, and judicial or revenue court record.
The Centre and Assam government wanted five more documents to be relied upon for filing of claims by the 40 lakh residents. These documents included voters list issued till 1971, ration card, extract of NRC 1951, citizenship certificate issued till 1966, and refugee registration certificate.
But NRC Coordinator in a report share with the bench apprehended possibility of generating fake documents of the proposed additional documents and preferred not to include them for filing fresh claims. But the bench disagreed. It said, "It is better not to exclude a genuine person than to apprehend inclusion of someone not eligible."
The final draft NRC list published on July 30 carried names of 2.89 crore residents of Assam, leaving out 40,70,707 persons. Of these, 37,59,630 names were rejected while the remaining 2,48,077 names were put on hold. Of late, Assam's demography has seen a big shift owing to constant influx of illegal migrants from Bangladesh. Although the state had prepared NRC in 1951, it was due to the initiative of the Supreme Court, the necessary push came to distinguish the native residents from migrants.
5 More Docu
The Supreme Court allowed the excluded persons to submit five additional documents including ration card, electoral roll and refugee registration certificate, to prove their claim.
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