NEW DELHI, Sept 19 - The Assam Public Works (APW) has opposed State NRC Coordinator Prateek Hajela�s proposal to drop five documents arguing that it may not be accepted as 90 per cent of the work has been completed on the basis of List A and List B documents.
In an affidavit filed before the Supreme Court, the APW, which is among the main petitioners in the NRC case, said that the suggestion of the State Coordinator NRC may not be accepted at this stage as the 90 per cent work of the NRC has been completed on the basis of List A and List B documents. Any change in acceptability of the documents may cause great injustice to a large section of people and thereby they will be deprived of getting their names included in the NRC, it said.
Hajela had on September 5 submitted a report before the apex court Bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi and RF Nariman suggesting that out of 15 documents of List A only 10 documents are proposed for permitting as relied upon documents by a claimant in support of his or her claim for inclusion of their names in the NRC.
The APW has stated that it will be highly prejudicial for the 40,07,707 people, whose names have not been included in the final draft NRC, if now they are to rely upon only 10 numbers of documents out of the total 15 documents from the List A.
On the contrary, it will undoubtedly raise questions in the minds of the public about the sanctity of the process of NRC, it said. Further, it is likely to pose a question as to whether some illegal immigrants have already succeeded to enter their names in the final draft NRC through use of those five documents, it added.
About appointment of a high level monitoring committee to oversee the work of sample reverification of at least 10 per cent of the names included in the final draft NRC and also the process of claims and objection, the APW has suggested that the committee may be given power to address grievances of the persons for an error-free NRC and to report to the Supreme Court directly without any intervention of either the Register General of India or NRC State Coordinator.
The APW also suggested some names for the proposed high-level monitoring committee. They include retired Chief Election Commissioner Hari Sankar Brahma, Justice (retd) Biplob Sarma, former president of Asam Sahitya Sabha Kanak Sen Deka, former IAS officer AK Absar Ali Hazarika, retired Assam DGP GM Srivastava, Brigadier (retd) Ranjit Borthakur, member of the Population Policy Control of Government of Assam Dr Ilias Ali, senior citizen and managing trustee Osom Educational Trust Pradip Kumar Bhuyan, and senior advocates Upamanyu Hazarika and Kamal Nayan Choudhury.
