NRC coordinator brands doubters 'ignorant'

GUWAHATI: Assam NRC coordinator Prateek Hajela on Friday came out all guns blazing against BJP and other organisations questioning the process of updating the state's citizenship rolls, saying those doubting the "very scientific system" mandated by the Supreme Court were "ignorant" of the basics and that it was "irrational" to even suggest illegal migrants had settled only in the districts bordering Bangladesh .
Hajela's retort was part of his official response to a memorandum by a citizens' group called Sachetan Nagarik Mancha, alleging "wrongful exclusions and inclusions" in the two draft NRCs published earlier and doubting if the final rolls to be published on Saturday would be any different.
Copies of the response have been sent to the Centre and the state government.
"Considering the fact that immigration from 'specified territory' (Bangladesh) has been happening for around a century now, it is not known as to how you could assume that post-1971 illegal migrants would be confined only to the border districts," Hajela writes.
"Given your interest in the matter, you may also try to find out from the authorities concerned the figure of illegal migrants declared by the various tribunals for border districts. You have further alleged that names of indigenous people are excluded from the NRC. On this account also, you have not pointed out a single such instance to any of the NRC authorities so far," he adds.
Hajela also explains why the system of verifying the citizenship and residency credentials based on legacy data cannot be faulted. "This scale of verification of documents through comparison with the backend is definitely a very scientific system of verification. The second system is the family tree-based verification, which involves verification for consistency of all persons claiming to be descendants of the same ancestor. Such a system on this scale has been put in place for the first time in the entire country...This system would certainly qualify to be one of the most scientific methods of verification."
The NRC coordinator said his team handled 6 crore documents during the course of the four-year updation exercise, using sophisticated software to ensure there were no slip-ups.
The BJP-led governments in the state and at the Centre had petitioned the Supreme Court to order sample re-verification of the documents of 20% of the population of the border districts and 10% of those elsewhere in the state.
The state government had earlier questioned the veracity of the NRC process by tabling in the assembly data showing an "unusually lower" exclusion percentage in the districts bordering Bangladesh compared to that of areas inhabited by the "indigenous population".
Hajela brought the government's criticism of the NRC exercise to the notice of the Supreme Court, which asked him to "focus on bringing out the final NRC on the scheduled date of August 31".
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References

1. ^{^} Assam NRC (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)
2. ^{^} Prateek Hajela (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)

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