Final nrc

Final nrc

With its publication, the foreigners issue in Assam needs to be buried for good.

The much-anticipated National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam saw its final publication on Saturday with just over 19 lakh people excluded from the list. Those who do not find themselves in the final NRC now will have to approach foreigners tribunals to appeal their cases. In fact, these tribunals are the only ones authorised to declare a person a foreigner. Hence, no coercive action should be taken against those not on the NRC.

The NRC exercise has left almost everyone dismayed, including many original proponents. From All Assam Students’ Union to Assam Public Works – the original petitioner in the Supreme Court whose plea led to updation of NRC – all have said that the final registry is flawed. The state BJP, in opposing NRC, has said many citizens have been left out of the list while many foreigners have been included. The truth is such an outcome is inevitable in any such exercise, given the country’s poor documentation culture. This would explain why a 16% rate of exclusion was earlier noted in Assam’s tribaldominated Karbi Anglong district. Much of this exercise, which cost Rs 12,000 crore of taxpayer’s money, resembles chasing a phantom.

Assam’s finance minister and BJP’s point-person in the north-east, Himanta Biswa Sarma, has expressed displeasure with the rolls and said that his party and government are thinking of an alternative mechanism to detect and expel foreigners. Such comments are highly irresponsible and show that vested political interests want to keep the foreigners issue alive in Assam.

NRC was meant to be a one-time exercise with massive resources devoted to it. The truth is it has been a mess, making it hard to comprehend why BJP wants to repeat it in other states. It has created hardships and anxieties for millions of people. Besides, the whole exercise always had an ethnic dimension to it, with Bengalis being conflated with Bangladeshis. With the final NRC publication it is time to put a stop to all of this. Those excluded must be treated humanely – one can’t put away 19 lakh people, amounting to 6% of the state’s population, in detention camps – and given fair legal redress. Breeding uncertainty and disorder is not the best way to convert the north-east into a bridgehead for New Delhi’s Act East policy. BJP must prioritise what it wants to go for: a $5 trillion economy, or large-scale witch hunts comparable to China’s “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”.