Assam Congress chief Ripun Bora urges Rajnath Singh to intervene in NRC updating process

Guwahati: Assam Pradesh Congress Committee president Ripun Bora on Thursday urged the Union home minister Rajnath Singh to intervene in the National Register of Citizenship (NRC) updating process. [caption id=“attachment_4171169” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of Rajnath Singh. AFP[/caption] Bora, in a letter to Singh, alleged that the NRC Authority is “acting in a partisan” manner to drop the names of lakhs of Indian citizens from the draft NRC. “We have received inputs from different parts of the state that names of several lakh Indian citizens will find no place in the draft NRC due to political interference by the state government as they wanted to misuse the NRC for their political gain by creating religious polarisation,” he said. Bora, a Rajya Sabha MP, alleged that some people belonging to the minority community had gone to different parts of the state to work as labourers and some local people had lodged a complaint against them in police stations that they were foreigners. “Now, the NRC state coordinator has forwarded all such cases registered in different police stations long back against those Indian citizens to the verification officers of the concerned NRC Seva Kendra with instruction to delete these names from the Draft NRC without any verification of their records,” he claimed. Apart from keeping on hold the names of 1.25 lakh D-Voters and their descendants, the names of approximately 90,000 declared foreigners and their descendants will not appear in the draft NRC to be published by 30 July, 2018, he claimed. “There is panic on this issue everywhere in Assam and if names of several lakhs genuine Indian citizens are left out, it will not only be an injustice but abuse of Constitutional powers,” Bora said. He urged the Union home minister to intervene immediately in the matter before publication of the Draft NRC on 30th July.