GUWAHATI, July 18 - Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal today told the Assembly that the State Government had accorded top priority to the National Register of Citizens (NRC) updating process and that the exercise would be taken to its logical conclusion in a foolproof manner.
Earlier, replying to a question by legislator Pobindra Deka, who wanted to know whether a timeframe had been set for completion of the NRC, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Chandra Mohan Patowary said that the NRC would be completed �as soon as possible� and that it was difficult to set a deadline because the exercise was a vast and sensitive one that also involved technicalities.
�Work on the NRC is on in full swing. We have so far completed 97.34 per cent field verification of the 68.08 lakh applications received so far. The number of documents received is 5.88 crore of which 4.45 (76 per cent) crore have been verified. The draft NRC copy will be published as soon as possible, and a specific date can be announced only after the next hearing of the Supreme Court,� he said, adding that over 30,000 government employees, besides several thousand contractual employees and outsourced ones, had been engaged in the NRC updating exercise.
Legislators Kamal Singh Narzary (BPF) and Ramendra Narayan Kalita (AGP) urged the government to exempt the teachers from the duty of NRC updating.
