GUWAHATI, Aug 31 - Former Chief Minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta, who led the six-year-long anti-alien Assam agitation and was also a signatory to the Assam Accord signed by the Union government with the Assam agitation leaders on the issue, described August 31, 2019 as a historic day for the indigenous people of Assam as, after 1951, they could get a National Register of Citizens (NRC) on this date.
The demand for an updated NRC was raised by the people of the State since the very beginning of the Assam agitation under the banner of All Assam Students� Union (AASU). The AASU has been demanding since 1979, when the Assam agitation started, that the NRC should be updated on the basis of the 1951 NRC and the 1952 electoral rolls. But the then Union government was repeatedly telling the Assam agitation leaders that copies of both the documents were not available.
But now, due to the bold stand taken by the Supreme Court of India under the leadership of its present Chief Justice, the process to update the NRC was undertaken and today the final NRC was published. For this attainment, thanks goes to the Supreme Court and its present Chief Justice, the petitioners of the Supreme Court case on the issue and the employees involved in the entire NRC updating process, he said.
There may be flaws. But these flaws could have been avoided and the updated NRC could have been a better document had some quarters, including the ruling party, extended full support to the process to update this vital document. It is very much pertinent here to demand that the flaws of the updated NRC should be removed, he said.
The State government should now recommend to the Election Commission deletion of the names of those excluded from the NRC, said Mahanta.
