Assam urges Election Commission to consider NRC in electoral roll revision: Report

The Election Commission of India plans a pan-India SIR of electoral rolls, an exercise that is already underway in poll-bound Bihar. (File: PTI)

Amid the Election Commission of India's ongoing exercise of Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in poll-bound Bihar, the Assam government is learnt to have urged the poll panel to factor in the National Register of Citizens while deciding the list of eligible documents for a similar exercise in the state, The Indian Express reported citing sources in the state government.

The Assam government, in its request to the EC, has said that it is the only state to have carried out the NRC exercise, and since the poll panel is also looking at the citizenship aspect to determine eligibility for inclusion in the electoral roll, the NRC, once published, could be one of the admissible documents for the SIR.

The development comes amid the Opposition's pointed criticism of the EC's Bihar SIR exercise claiming that it was a de-facto citizenship verification exercise that amounted to rolling out the "NRC through the back door" and that it fell outside the purview of the poll panel's mandate.

The Assam government's request to the EC came after the latter's announcement of a nationwide Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls starting with Bihar. The inclusion of the NRC as one of the documents, however, could translate into delays in conducting the SIR in the state since the Assam NRC remains in abeyance.

The draft NRC published in 2019 excluded 19.6 lakh individuals from 3.3 crore applicants. Since then, the Registrar General of India is yet to notify it with both the BJP-led state governments since then maintaining that they do not find it acceptable in its current form.

The Assam government has maintained that the inclusions and exclusions in the draft NRC are erroneous, and that it excludes “indigenous people” while including large numbers of “foreigners”.

The Assam government has also claimed that the number of people who had entered the state illegally after March 24, 1974 – the cut-off date for the NRC – is far higher than the 19 lakh figure that the draft NRC has found.

Notably, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, who remains a critic of the draft NRC published in 2019, informed the state Assembly last month that the state government is still in the process of seeking 20 percent reverification of the list in districts bordering Bangladesh and 10 percent in the rest of the districts.

Sarma told the newspaper that there has been no “correspondence” with the EC on this issue. The government expects the NRC, with the required verification, to be released by October, the paper quoted a source in the Assam government as saying.