GUWAHATI, Aug 4 - Of the several thousand persons who had gone missing after being declared as �foreigners� by the court of law since 1985, law-enforcing agencies could track down only 1,500 of them.
The abysmally low rate of arrest of the declared foreigners who are missing assumes significance vis-�-vis the recent incident of several of them finding their names enrolled in the complete draft National Register of Citizens.
�The number of declared foreigners who are missing as on date is over 30,000,� official sources told The Assam Tribune.
Since 1985, around 93,000 persons have been declared as foreigners by the Foreigners Tribunals in the State.
Assam Police sources said that many of them had either changed their names or shifted to another district making it tougher for the police to locate them.
Meanwhile, Project Coordinator of the NRC, Prateek Hajela, when contacted, said that concerted effort is being initiated to identify such names and get them deleted from the NRC.
�It is a continuous process and no stone has been left unturned to omit such names. We are continuously on the lookout for them. The difficult part is that that most of them had changed their names and even their addresses. Further, there are many common names to deal with. But the process would continue till the NRC is updated,� Hajela said.
Earlier today, Chief Secretary TY Das also spoke to the NRC coordinator on the issue.
Meanwhile, an Assam Police official said that the database for foreigners which the Assam Police Border Organization is coming up with would go a long way in helping identifying such people based on finger prints.
�At the moment, we still do not have any point of reference to match the identification of such persons in question. And as such, it becomes difficult to make a case,� he added.
