Assam makes NRC application receipt mandatory to get Aadhaar card

Himanta Biswa Sarma announced the decision at a presser on Wednesday.

In a clear attempt to link the Aadhaar Card with the National Register of Citizens (NRC), the Assam cabinet on Wednesday cleared a stringent operating procedure for Aadhaar enrollment procedure in the state. The cabinet decided that all applications to get the unique identity card will be rejected if the applicant or the family had not applied in NRC.

The decision was taken in view of an infiltration attempt by citizens of trouble-hit Bangladesh, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said at a press conference in the state capital, Guwahati.

"Scores of infiltrators have been nabbed by Assam Police, Tripura Police and BSF in the last two months. That is why infiltration from Bangladesh is a concern for us. We need to strengthen our system and that is why we decided to toughen the Aadhaar Card mechanism," he added.

Official data shows that in Barpeta, Aadhaar cardholders are 103.74% of the population, in Dhubri 103.48%, in Morigaon 101.76%, and in Nagaon about 100.86%, raising concerns that suspected foreign nationals may have managed to procure the cards.

From now on, the General Administration Department of the state government will be the nodal agency to carry out the verification of the Aadhaar applicants and one Additional District Commissioner will be the concerned person in every district, Sarma said after the Cabinet meeting.

"After the initial application, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) will send it to the state government for verification. The local Circle Officer (CO) will first check if the applicant or his parents or family had applied for inclusion in the NRC," he added.

If there was no application for the NRC, then the Aadhaar request will be immediately rejected and a report will be submitted to the Centre accordingly, the CM said.

"If it is found that there was an application for NRC, the CO will go for field-level verification as per Supreme Court directives. After the officer is fully convinced, the Aadhaar will be approved," he added.

Sarma, however, said this new directive would not be applicable to the central government employees, who were working in other states and did not apply for the NRC.

"In this way, we will enforce a strict mechanism to strengthen our Aadhaar issuance system so that no doubtful people can get this identity card," he added.

According to the new Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) approved by the Cabinet, the state government will verify the submitted documents and return them to UIDAI online within 45 days of receipt.

The final NRC was released on August 31, 2019 by excluding 19,06,657 persons. A total of 3,11,21,004 names were included out of 3,30,27,661 applicants.

On the other decisions taken by the Cabinet, Sarma said the manual system of accepting land revenue has been reintroduced in view of difficulties faced by small landholders in the state.