GUWAHATI, Oct 27 - Serious efforts are still on to get names of foreigners included in the National Register of Citizens (NRC) through forgery and by putting pressure on officials involved in the job, while a number of cases of declared foreigners managing to get their names included in the electoral rolls were detected during the process of verification of documents submitted by applicants during the process of verification.
In a report submitted to the Supreme Court, State NRC Coordinator Prateek Hajela expressed the view that trimming down of documents eligible during the process of submitting claims from 15 to 10 should not affect the genuine Indian citizens. He alleged that a pro-immigrant lobby is trying its best to ensure that the immigrants can get their names included in the NRC. He suspected that the demand for retaining all the 15 list A documents for submission of claims is more of a political posturing than a real requirement for protecting the interests of genuine Indian citizens.
The illegal migrants had not imagined that the NRC process would be so strict and they though that by using forgeries and mischief, they would be able to get their names included in the citizen register. As the process of claims and objections is the last chance for the illegal migrants, actions like heavy canvassing for acceptance of all the 15 list A documents are a well planned attempt to include names of immigrants through bulldozing, the report said. The pro-immigrant lobby is trying to get names of foreigners included in the NRC through forgery and submission of bogus documents with the help of a network of forgers and touts.
The report further said that there were a number of instances where declared
foreigners managed to get their names enrolled in the voters� lists and even obtained photo identity cards. A number of such cases were detected and their names were not included in the draft NRC. Hajela asserted that he would be able to produce such cases before the court if ordered to do so.
Giving one such example of a foreigner obtaining forged document, the report said that one Nikhil Das, a Bangladeshi national, entered India in 2011 and he managed to obtain a relief eligibility certificate by paying an amount of Rs 8,000 and a voter�s identity card by paying Rs 11,000. He also collected other documents like birth certificate, PAN card, etc. This proves that it is easy to obtain fake documents in Assam and there is need for devising a strong mechanism to detect such mischief to prepare an error-free NRC, the report said.
