Assam Releases Final NRC List: Number Of Excluded Persons Halves To 19 Lakh From Over 40 Lakh In Draft Document

Assam has released the final list of National Register of Citizens (NRC) excluding over 19 lakh persons from its roughly 3.3 crore population. The number is half from the over 40 lakh people excluded in the draft NRC on 30 July, 2018.

As per information released by the NRC on Twitter, 3,11,21,004 people have been included in the final draft while 19,06,657 people have been excluded. The excluded people failed to submit any claims against their exclusion from the draft NRC released a year ago.

The excluded people will now have 120 days to file an appeal against the exclusion in any of the 100 foreigners; tribunals established in the state which are mandated to finish a case within six month of filing. Appeals to the tribunals decisions can be made at the High Court and the Supreme Court.

The exercise, being held under the supervision of the Supreme Court, while initially hailed as a milestone in weeding out illegal immigrants from the state is now staring at irrelevancy. The state BJP has alleged massive discrepancies in the way the list has been compiled.

A report shared by the ruling BJP in the state assembly had shown that the percentage of people excluded from the NRC draft was higher in Hindu-majority districts than that in Muslim-dominated districts, most of them bordering Bangladesh. This has raised questions on the reliability of the exercise itself, with a particularly large number of indigenous inhabitants having being excluded from the register from tribal districts.