GUWAHATI, Oct 21 - The Assam State Committee of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) today e-mailed a petition to the Chief Justice of India (CJI) with a request to accept 15 admissible documents for claims and objections for updating the National Register of Citizens (NRC).
The CPI-M State Committee said in its letter to the CJI that lakhs of genuine Indian citizens are facing extreme difficulties for submitting their claims due to the exclusion of five key documents from the 15 admissible documents listed earlier. The five documents are the 1951 NRC, Voter�s Lists up to March 24, 1971, Refugee Registration Certificate, Citizenship Certificate and Ration Cards (Supporting Document).
The proposal to bring down the list of documents from 15 to 10 has become the stumbling block in the process for filing claims since lakhs of people do not possess any one of the 10 documents which are now being accepted by the NRC authorities. To be more precise, a large number of people belonging to socially, economically and educationally backward sections in particular have not been able to file their claims till today due to the exclusion of the five documents.
The letter said that it will be a great injustice if lakhs of genuine Indian citizens are deprived of the right to claim for inclusion of their names in the NRC in the absence of documents like passport, LIC policy, bank or post office account, land documents, PRC issued from outside the State, license or certificate issued by the government, service or employment certificate, birth certificate, records pertaining to court, etc. of the relevant period up to March 24, 1971.
The CPI-M State Committee in its letter said that thousands of people, cutting across religious, linguistic and ethnic barriers, have put their signatures in the petition addressed to the CJI with an appeal for ordering acceptance of the five documents being dropped by the NRC authorities.
