GUWAHATI, Sept 2 - A detailed data base of all the persons who had applied for inclusion of their names in the National Register of Citizens (NRC) is being maintained and in future it will be possible to check the details of each and every person if required. The records of the hearings and verifications carried out at different levels during the NRC update process have also been stored properly for future use if necessary.
Highly placed official sources told The Assam Tribune that detailed records of all the persons who had applied for inclusion of names in the NRC are now available both in hard and soft copies. �If someone wants to check the records of any individual, all the details including the family trees, other relatives, etc., are available,� sources added.
Around 3.30 crore people of the State had applied for inclusion of names in the NRC and more than six crore documents were submitted. Some had applied through the NRC Seva Kendras and some through the online process. Sources said that all the hard copies were scanned and stored in the data base created for the process of updating the NRC as the process used was an Information Technology (IT) driven one and the records are stored properly.
After the receipts of the applications with documents, family trees were created both manually and digitally and those have been stored. The reports of the first level of verification process and the family tree verifications were stored along with the reports of the officers engaged in the process. Even the proceedings of the hearings were recorded so that they can be used in future if required.
After the publication of the draft of the NRC, which excluded more than 40 lakh names, around 36 lakh filed claims and two lakh objections were raised and those records are kept safely for future scrutiny. The verifications of claims and objections were carried out by State Government officials engaged in the process and in some cases, scrutiny were carried out by the Deputy Commissioners and the officers authorized by them to do so on their behalf. However, the reports of the verifying officers in the final stages are still only in hard copies as the process went on till the last moment. Those reports will also be digitized now so that those can be stored properly, sources added.
Sources pointed out that as different organizations including the All Assam Students� Union (AASU) have announced that they would approach the Supreme Court with an appeal to remove the �discrepancies�, it would be easier for anyone to check the details of every individual from the data base if the court issues any such order. Moreover, the possibility of substantial number of people, who have been left out of the NRC approaching the Foreigners� Tribunals cannot be ruled out and for hearings of cases by the Tribunals, the records of the individuals may be required.
Meanwhile, commenting on how the figure of people left out from the two drafts came down from more than 41 lakh to only 19 lakh, sources said that in the drafts, names of number of Indian citizens from other parts of the country were not included in the drafts as they failed to submit relevant documents or the documents sent to other states for verification at sources were not received. Name of a senior IAS officer of the State was also not included. Similarly, names of children, whose parents could not submit birth certificates were also not included , but later such names were included if the names of the parents are in the NRC, sources added.
