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Draft NRC to be out within 2-3 months

By R Dutta Choudhury

GUWAHATI, April 16 - The process of updating the National Register of Citizens (NRC) slowed down in the last couple of months because of the elections to the Assam Legislative Assembly. However, the draft of the NRC is likely to be completed within the next two to three months.

Talking to The Assam Tribune, the State coordinator for updating the NRC, Prateek Hajela said that as the Deputy Commissioners, Circle Officers and other government officers were engaged in election duty, the process of updating the NRC slowed down in the last couple of months. He pointed out that family tree verification is a time-consuming process and it requires proper supervision of senior officers. But the officers had hardly any time to devote to that process during the elections. However, the other works, like data entry, back-end verification of the documents submitted by the applicants, etc., continued even during the election process.

Hajela pointed out that immediately after the election, the Bihu holidays also affected the process. However, it is likely to gain momentum from the next week onwards when most of the senior officials would have the time to devote to the job.

Replying to a question on whether the process would be affected again during the counting of votes, he said that it would be affected only for a few days.

Though the Deputy Commissioners were asked to register cases against those involved in submitting forged or illegal documents, that process also got slowed down, as the officers were busy with the elections. The process is also likely to gather momentum soon.

It may be mentioned here that during the process of verification of the documents, a large number of forged or fake papers were detected and cases would be registered against those involved in submitting the same.

Hajela said that they are hoping to publish the draft of the NRC within the next two to three months. �The process may seem slow, but we are trying our best to ensure quality of the work and thorough investigation and checking of the documents is a time-consuming process,� he added.

After the publication of the draft NRC, the citizens would be given one month�s time to file complaints, if any. Hajela said that if someone�s name is left out, he or she can apply immediately. People will also be able to apply for correction of names and if anyone has any objection against inclusion of any person�s name in the NRC, he or she can also file applications.

However, the date for publication of the final NRC is yet to be finalised.

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