GUWAHATI, Sept 2 - Many members of the old Bengali and tribal families of Guwahati have been excluded from the final National Register of Citizens (NRC) published on Saturday, said former MLA Ajoy Dutta here today.
He said these families are at the root of development of Guwahati into a city from a mere urban centre. While these tribal families are among the oldest families of Guwahati, the Bengali families in question are living in Guwahati for the past about 140 to 170 years.
Together with these families, members of many of the refugee families living in the city as well as many of the faculty members of IIT Guwahati and their families hailing from outside Assam have experienced exclusion of their names as well as those of many of their family members, from the final NRC, Dutta said.
The tribal families, members of whose have been subjected to exclusion from the NRC, are living in the areas like Jatiya, Dakhingaon and Narakasur Hill.
The old Bengali families, whose members have been excluded from the final NRC, include the family of Rai Bahadur Kalicharan Sen of Panbazar, the Saraswati family of Jasawanta Road, and Bomkesh Sengupta of Paltan Bazar Professor Colony.
The names of two daughters-in-law of the family of Rai Bahadur Kalicharan Sen have also been excluded from the NRC, while the name of a daughter-in-law of the Saraswatis has also been left out. Some of the family members of the Senguptas of Paltan Bazar also failed to get their names featured in the NRC, said Dutta.
He regretted that while Rai Bahadur Kalicharan Sen was the founder secretary of the Santatan Dharmasabha, popularly known as Hari Sabha, and the Kamrup Academy High School, Ramesh Saraswati of the Saraswati family established eri and muga as the commodities of modern trading practices, about 100 years back.
The members of these families had submitted all the relevant documents in support of their claims as bonafide citizens of the country. They were assured by the officials concerned that they could produce the documents in a satisfactory manner. Yet, in the long run, names of some of their members failed to feature in the NRC, Dutta said.
On the other hand, the names of the members of the tribal and refugee families have also been excluded from the NRC because they were ignorant of the need to approach the NRC authorities for inclusion of their names in this vital document, Dutta said.
