Yet to begin issuing rejection slips to 1.9 million left out of NRC, Centre tells Supreme Court

Seven years after Assam’s National Register of Citizens (NRC) excluded 1.9 million people, the Centre has told the Supreme Court that the process of issuing rejection slips to them has not even begun because the final NRC is yet to be formally notified.

The disclosure means that people left out of NRC published on August 31, 2019 are still without the formal rejection document that would tell them the reasons for their exclusion and enable them to pursue statutory remedy before foreigners tribunals.

In an affidavit filed on September 28, the Registrar General of India (RGI) told a bench of justices PS Narasimha and Alok Aradhe that the state NRC coordinator was still working on a “security regime” for preserving the NRC data. The data has not yet been handed over to RGI, which can notify the final NRC only after receiving it.

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“Enactment of the security regime for NRC data by the state coordinator is under progress and hence data has not been shared with the Registrar General of India,” the affidavit said, adding that RGI could notify the final NRC only after the data was shared.

RGI further said that the process of issuing rejection slips “has not been started yet” by the state NRC coordinator.

The Supreme Court had specifically directed the state NRC coordinator on May 8, 2018 to develop a mechanism for issuing rejection slips to people excluded from the final list so that they could challenge their exclusion before foreigners tribunals.

The state NRC coordinator subsequently informed RGI in October 2020 that rejection slips could be issued only after RGI notified the final NRC. That notification, however, is still awaited.

The Supreme Court on Monday adjourned the matter to November 6 after the Assam government sought time to file its response.

The proceedings arise from petitions filed by the Assam State Jamiat Ulama, All Assam Minority Students Union and Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind, among others, seeking rejection slips for those excluded from NRC and NRC cards for those included in the final list.

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After years of protest in the northeastern state where demographic changes have always been a lightning rod, the Assam government announced it was updating NRC in 2015, following the Centre’s December 2013 notification. Every person had to map either themselves or a family member to the 1951 NRC rolls or the electoral rolls before the midnight of March 24, 1971 – the day before the 1971 war in Bangladesh began. The deadline was in accordance with the 1985 Assam accord.

More than 6.8 million applications covering about 33 million people were received, accompanied by around 66 million documents. The draft NRC was published in July 2018 and excluded roughly four million people. It was

followed by claims and objections, before the supplementary lists were published on August 31, 2019.

The final NRC found more than 31.1 million people eligible for inclusion, while 1,906,657 were left out, including people who did not file claims for inclusion.

Those dissatisfied with the outcome were entitled to challenge the decision before foreigners tribunals. Under the procedure contemplated for NRC, such appeals could be filed within 120 days. The Assam government has around 100 quasi-judicial foreigners tribunals for adjudicating citizenship-related claims. But the absence of rejection slips has left excluded persons without the document envisaged by the Supreme Court to facilitate that challenge.

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The delay in finalising the process is linked in part to the Supreme Court’s August 13, 2019 direction that the NRC data be protected through a security regime similar to that governing Aadhaar data. The court had directed that the list of inclusions and exclusions be made available to the state government, Centre and RGI only after such safeguards were put in place.

The latest affidavit says that this security regime is still under preparation.

RGI has also informed the Supreme Court that the question of issuing NRC cards to those included in the final list is pending before the court in separate proceedings.

Another petition filed by former state NRC coordinator Hitesh Dev Sarma seeking complete, comprehensive and time-bound re-verification of the draft and supplementary NRC lists is also pending.