Aspiring For A Comprehensive Revision Of Assam NRC

By Nava Thakuria, New Age Islam 8 September 2025 Something interesting is waiting to happen in Assam, as the Supreme Court of India recently agreed to hear a petition asking for a comprehensive and time-bound re-verification of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) updated in Assam during 2014-2019. The apex court on 22 August 2025 responded positively to the plea forwarded by a retired IAS officer (with a satisfactory financial support from common people) for an error-free NRC. Admitting the writ petition from Hitesh Devsarma, who happened to be a former State coordinator to NRC Assam updating process, the SC issued notices to the Union government in New Delhi, Assam government in Dispur, current State NRC coordinator and Registrar General of India (RGI) seeking their responses. For records, the NRC’s final draft copy was released on the midnight of 31 August 2019 (leaving 19 lakh individuals out of 3.30 crore participants undocumented), but that is yet to be notified by the RGI. The 1951 NRC for Assam was updated following the direction of the SC with an aim to detect all illegal citizens with the cut-off date 25 March 1971 (which was accepted in the memorandum of understanding (popularly known as Assam Accord) signed in 1985 to culminate the six years long agitation to detect & deport millions of unrecognised migrants from Bangladesh. Assam Public Works chief Aabhijeet Sharma pursued for the NRC updation with a PIL in the highest court, which later reportedly monitored the exercise engaging over 50,000 government employees and nearly 6000 part-time workers. Prateek Hajela, a 1995 batch IAS officer of the Assam-Meghalaya cadre was appointed as the coordinator in 2019 to supervise the massive exercise. Soon after the final NRC draft was released, Hajela, the native of Madhya Pradesh was relocated to his home-state fearing his security. Later, Assam government gave him voluntary retirement with hardly any precondition. Meanwhile, the NRC updating process got embraced with corruption & malpractices, which was detected by none other than the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG). As per the CAG report (year ending 31 March 2020), there had been financial irregularities to the tune of Rs 260 crores during the NRC updating process. The highest national audit body even recommended penal actions against Hajela along with Wipro limited (which functioned as the system integrator in the process). Prior to the CAG report, Hajela’s successor Devsarma raised the issue of corruption and mishandling the NRC updating process helping a large number of illegally migrated individuals’ names in the list. He framed serious allegations that Hajela used tampered software in the process to entertain those infiltrators in the pursuit of foreign money. Hundreds of thousands of illegal foreigners' names were included in the NRC draft as 'originally inhabitants' of Assam. At the same time, quality-checks of those entries were restricted for even the superior officers. An important verification mechanism titled ‘Family Tree Matching’ was compromised by Hajela and his associates. With more to it, Hajela even implemented a different verification process called DMIT (district magistrate investigation team) without the knowledge and consent of the top court. It was simply done to include the names of persons without valid documents, claimed Devsarma, adding that a huge volume of funds might have come from Arabian countries to enrol the recently migrated Muslim settlers from Bangladesh in the NRC. “So it’s not a mere financial scam involving a few hundred crores, but a serious threat with implications on national security. A probe by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) can only find out how much money was flown from foreign countries to destabilize Assam and northeast India,” said Devsarma, while talking to this writer, adding that as per the procedure, Hajela should have been asked to appear before the Public Accounts Committee, but the government allowed him to go almost free. Moreover, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) should have taken the case of money laundering during the NRC Assam exercise. Devsarma himself lodged two police complaints against Hajela along with APW president Sharma and influential filmmaker Luit Kr Barman, but none were registered by the State police authority. Only one case, which was lately lodged by Gitika Bhattacharya against Hajela has been registered and that only after the court directive. So Devsarma believes that Hajela has a lot of ‘friends’ in Assam as his saviours. In recent days, Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma also started commenting that the NRC list was faulty and the fraud was committed on Asomiya people during the process (for which New Delhi spent Rs 1600 crores). The outspoken saffron leader stated that Hajela prepared a wrong NRC for Assam. He went ahead by saying that some motivated elements came to Assam from outside to manipulate the NRC with foreign infiltrators’ names. But the government has realised the matter and adopted correction measures. After all, a flawed NRC cannot be accepted as it would jeopardise national security, asserted Sarma, adding that the indigenous people of Assam deserve a correct and error-free NRC. Patriotic People’s Front Assam (PPFA), a forum of nationalist citizens in eastern India, continues demanding for an authentic NRC for Assam. It has demanded a fair probe into the findings of CAG regarding the corruption and also deprivation of salaries meant for 6000 temporary workers. Employed as data entry operators (DEOs), those workers got only Rs 5,500 to 9,100 per month per person (which is below the country’s basic minimum wage), whereas the Wipro company received an average of Rs 14,500 per month per DEO. The total volume of siphoned money (even after deducting the reasonable profit margin) is estimated to be over Rs 100 crore, which still remains in the pockets of Wipro or its sub-contractor Integrated System & Services till date. The PPFA asserted that the deprived DEOs must get their dues irrespective of the fate of Assam NRC. A number of civil society groups however demanded to finalize the Assam NRC with no verification as the SC upheld the constitutional validity of clause 6A of the Citizenship Act, 1955 (which endorsed the cut-off date for granting Indian citizenship in Assam at 25 March 1971). They argued that the NRC Assam was updated with the concerned base year and after the court verdict there was no point for delays in its implementation. But the conscious citizens vigorously questioned their motive asserting that if the NRC is not re-verified, millions of illegal migrants (read East Pakistani/Bangladeshi nationals) would get enrolled in the final list. Leaving aside a few exceptions, Assam media remained largely shy of reporting the financial malpractices that took place during the NRC updating process. In fact, the majority of local media persons tried their best to spread misinformation (reasons best known to them only), where some Guwahati-based television journalists bent upon proving that the NRC final draft as the most sought-after document for the indigenous population. They shamelessly lobbied for accepting it with no verification. At least one TV talk-show host was named and shamed on social media, but he did not respond to the allegation (not done till date). The outspoken scribe even published a book praising Hajela's work as unparalleled with a push for national recognition to the technocrat turned bureaucrat. Hence it’s assumed that a genuine probe would unearth all guilty individuals who wanted to cheat the nation for their selfish gains. URL: https://www.newageislam.com/current-affairs/comprehensive-revision-assam-nrc/d/136757 New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism