GUWAHATI, June 2 - Around 99 per cent of verification of documents, including the family trees and certificates issued by the panchayat secretaries of the applicants for inclusion of names in the National Register of Citizens (NRC), has been completed and the State Coordinator for NRC, Prateek Hajela has asserted that they would be able to publish the final draft of the citizenship document on June 30 as ordered by the Supreme Court.
Talking to The Assam Tribune, Hajela said he had informed the apex court that the verification process would be completed by May 31 and he would require a month for data entry and mopping up operations before the publication of the final draft of the NRC. He said that some persons could not attend the hearings due to �genuine reasons� and they would have to be given a chance to appear before the concerned officials for hearing.
A new schedule for such hearing would be announced shortly and Hajela hoped that the process would be completed within the next few days. This will be part of the mopping up operations. In a few cases, the officials concerned could not take decisions on inclusion of names on the basis of hearings and final decisions in such cases would also take some time. However, he said that the work would be completed on time to ensure that the final draft of the NRC is published on June 30.
Hajela said that at the same time, the data entry process is also on and around 85 per cent of the job is complete and completing the entire process within the stipulated time frame would not be a problem.
It may be mentioned here that 3.29 crore people applied for inclusion of their names in the NRC and names of 1.90 crore people appeared in the first draft published on December 31. Around 48 lakh mismatches were found in family trees of the applicants and those were verified in the final phase along with the certificates issued by panchayat secretaries to 29 lakh people.
Hajela revealed that the names of persons declared as foreigners by the foreigners tribunals were not included in the NRC, while the names of persons declared as doubtful voters were also not included. As per the directive of the Supreme Court, the names of �D� voters would have to be put on hold till their cases are disposed of by the tribunals. On the inclusion of names of the brothers and sisters of persons declared as foreigners, it is directed that their names would have to be sent to the tribunals by the Border Police and only then the NRC coordinator�s office can strike them off the NRC.
The State NRC coordinator said that after the publication of the final draft, the people would be given time for one month to file claims and objections and the final NRC would be published only after all such claims and objections are disposed of.
