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Around 1.50 lakh first draft names will be deleted: Hajela

By R DUTTA CHOUDHURY

GUWAHATI, July 3 - The State Coordinator of National Register of Citizens (NRC), Prateek Hajela has asserted that the final draft of the NRC would be published within the time limit of July 30 set by the Supreme Court and names of around 1.50 lakh persons, whose names appeared in the first draft published on December 31 last year, would not be included in the final draft.

Talking to The Assam Tribune, Hajela said that all out efforts have been made to make the NRC as error free as possible. He also said that if the name of any Indian citizen is left out of the NRC, it is not the end of the road for him or her as such persons would get adequate opportunity to file claims and objections.

The State NRC coordinator revealed that the process of verification has been completed and the data entry work is going on in full swing. As per the schedule submitted to the Supreme Court by the State Coordinator, the data entry work should be completed by July 10 and quality checks should be completed by July 20. The consolidation of the central database and generation of the PDF is scheduled to be completed by July 26 and the printouts will be taken by July 29 to ensure publication of the final draft of the NRC on July 30.

Hajela pointed out that though the final draft of the NRC would be available online, hard copies of it would be made available in all the 2500 NRC Seva Kendras spread all over the State and around 22 lakh printouts would have to be taken, which would require some time. �We have to carry out the task with clinical precision and at least three hard copies would have to be provided to each NSK,� he added.

Hajela said that floods affected around 89 NSKs in three Barak valley districts, which slowed down the process considerably and that is why, the final draft could not be published on June 30 as per the earlier schedule. He pointed out that officers were also engaged in flood relief works, which also slowed down the process. When asked to comment on allegations levelled by certain organizations that the final draft was not published on June 30 because of a �conspiracy�, he said , �as the progress of updating the NRC is being monitored regularly by the Supreme Court, if anyone has any complaint , he or she should approach the Court without making such allegations through the media.�

Meanwhile, names of around 1.50 lakh people, whose names appeared in the first draft, would not be included in the final draft. Hajela said that names of 65,694 persons, whose names appeared in the first draft, were found to be inadmissible during the family tree verification, while, names of 48,456 married women, who provided Panchayat certificates as linkage were also found to be non-admissible. During the quality control checks, names of another 19,783 persons were found to be non admissible. A few more such cases may come up during the final quality control checks. However, he said that such persons would have an opportunity to file claims after the publication of the final draft.

Hajela said that the names of doubtful voters and those whose cases are going on in the Foreigners Tribunals are not included in the final draft. �We have not deleted their names and only kept them on the hold. If they win the cases in the Foreigners� Tribunals, their names will be included in the NRC later,� he added.

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