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Scrap updated NRC, Assam govt. urges Centre
Why in news?
- Following Amit Shah’s statement in Rajya Sabha that NRC exercise would be conducted across India and repeated in Assam, State’s Finance Minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, said Assam had asked the Centre to reject the updated final NRC in the State.
More in news
- Final NRC in Assam
(1) Monitored by the SC, was published on August 31
(2) More than 19 lakh of 3.29 crore applicants were left out of NRC.
(3) It took five years to compile & cost the exchequer ₹1,220 crore.
(4) NRC in Assam was a culmination of the Assam Accord signed in 1985 after a six-year agitation, spearheaded by the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) and the All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad (AAGSP) for detection, disenfranchisement and deportation of foreigners.
- ‘It will be catastrophic’ : as per human rights activist Harsh Mander
(1) NRC exercise, if conducted across the country, would be catastrophic for the social fabric and future of India as a secular, democratic republic.
(2) Already families excluded from NRC in assam are enormously suffering.
(3) If it is now imposed in the country after the Citizenship Amendment Bill, it means that only our Muslim brothers and sisters will have to prove their citizenship based on documents that most of us will not be able to produce as it is decades old.
(4) This is truly the destruction of the country based on the idea of equal citizenship.
- Citizenship Amendment Bill that seeks to grant citizenship to undocumented non-Muslims from Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan is likely to be taken up in the ongoing winter session of Parliament.
- Common cutoff-date
(1) As per govt. official before the NRC exercise is conducted, the government will have to decide a common cutoff-date.
(2) As per Article 6 of the Constitution: cutoff-date for migration to India from Pakistan is July 19, 1948 whereas in Assam, that borders Bangladesh, it is March 24, 1971.
- An official said laws existed to “detect, detain and deport illegal immigrants”, and the power to identify and deport the foreign nationals staying illegally had been delegated to the States.
Sources
The Hindu