GUWAHATI, Aug 5 - Apart from disposing off the claims and objections, the National Register of Citizens (NRC) authorities, on their own, will keep efforts to improve the complete draft to come up with an error free final NRC. Moreover, several family members of former President of India, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed did not apply for inclusion of names in the NRC and their names were not dropped as alleged by certain sections.
Talking to The Assam Tribune, State NRC coordinator Prateek Hajela admitted that there have been attempts by certain sections to discredit the process of updating the NRC despite the fact that the Supreme Court is monitoring every step of the process. He asserted that the process was fair and transparent and the citizens witnessed the process of hearings. He pointed out that the system of filing of claims and objections were kept in the process to give a chance to everyone whose names were not included in the draft or else the final NRC could have been published without publishing a draft. The draft has been published so that all sections of people can go through it and submit claims and objections. Moreover, the persons whose names have been dropped, have been given an opportunity to meet the officers in charge of the NRC Seve Kendras to know the reasons for dropping their names so that they can properly file claims and objections, he added.
Hajela said that in such a massive exercise, which was never carried out anywhere in the country before, certain minimum bona fide human errors can be expected but all out efforts are being made to come out with an error free NRC. He also sought the cooperation of all sections of people in this regard.
The NRC Coordinator admitted that possibility of inclusion of names of some foreign nationals in the draft cannot be ruled out as there have been instances where people, who are not eligible to be included in the NRC changed names and places where they stay. A large number of such cases have been detected in the verification process. He said that even if someone's name is included in the draft and later it is found that he or she is not eligible for inclusion in the NRC, such names would be dropped. At the same time, if any person is declared as a foreigner by the Foreigners' Tribunals, his or her name would also be dropped while publishing the final NRC.
On the allegation that names of prominent persons were dropped from the draft, Hajela said that such persons would get an opportunity to get names included during the claims and objections process. However, at the same time, he said that some persons also did not apply for inclusion of names. One such example is the family members of former President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed. He said that though certain organizations are criticizing the NRC authorities for non inclusion of names of the family members of the former President, the NRC authorities are helpless as they did not apply for inclusion of names in the NRC. �The legacy data code of the former President and his wife are available in the website. If some of their family members do not apply for inclusion of names, we are helpless,� he added.
Citing another such example, he said that the name of one Army man , who hails from Chaigaon area, was not included in the draft because a case is pending against him in the Foreigners' Tribunal. In several such cases, if people do not apply or failed to submit proper documents, the NRC authorities are helpless as �we have to go through the same process with every citizen as per the law,� he added.
