GUWAHATI, July 22 - A crucial hearing on the process of updating the National Register of Citizens (NRC) will be held by the Supreme Court tomorrow and the All Assam Students� Union (AASU) is hopeful that the Apex Court would fix a date for the publication of the final NRC.
The State and Central Governments have appealed to the Court to postpone the date for publication of the final NRC and to go for 20 per cent re-verification in the districts bordering Bangladesh and 10 per cent in other parts of the State. The Court had earlier fixed July 31 as the date for publication of the final NRC.
Talking to The Assam Tribune, AASU chief adviser Samujjal Bhattacharya said that the Court is likely to announce the final time frame for the publication of the final NRC tomorrow. He said, �the people of Assam have full faith on the Supreme Court. It is because of the monitoring of the Court that the process of updating the NRC reached this stage and we are confident that under the supervision of the Court, the people of the State will get an NRC free from names of foreign nationals.�
Bhattacharya pointed out that the Court had fixed July 31 as the date for publication of the final NRC long back and only on July 7 and 8, the State and Central Governments submitted pleas before the Court to go for re-verification. He also pointed out that though the process of updating the NRC is going on under the supervision of the Court, the Government machinery was engaged in the process.
Meanwhile, till date, all the officers engaged in the process are working by taking July 31 as the deadline for publication of the final NRC. Official sources said that as the Court has not yet announced any new date, everyone engaged in the process are working round the clock to finish the job as per the earlier schedule. Sources said that around 80 lakh of the persons whose names appeared in the draft of the NRC, were re-verified during the process of disposing of the claims and objections, while, during the quality checks carried out later, 1.02 lakh persons were found to be non eligible for inclusion in the NRC and their names were deleted from the draft.
Sources also admitted that though floods affected the process for a few days, the field works were almost over and only quality checks by senior officers were going on when floods hit the State and the officers are now working hard to complete the job on time after the floods subsided.
It may be mentioned here that in the last hearing, the Court asked the Solicitor General to go through the reports of the State Coordinator submitted on July 10 and 18 and fixed July 23 as the next date for hearing.
