New Delhi: The Centre has told the Supreme Court that the process of issuing rejection slips to 1.9 million people, who were excluded from Assam’s National Register of Citizens (NRC), has not begun yet because the final NRC is yet to be formally notified.
According to the Final National Register of Citizens released in August 2019, names of 19.07 lakh applicants were excluded from the list while 3.11 crore applicants were included in the final NRC.
In an affidavit filed before the top court, the Registrar General of India submitted that the state NRC coordinator was still working on a security regime for preserving NRC data.
The data has not yet been handed over to the Registrar General, who can notify the final NRC only after receiving it, the affidavit said.
Enactment of the security regime for NRC data by the state coordinator is in progress, and hence data has not been shared with the Registrar General of India (RGI), the affidavit said, adding that the process of issuing rejection slips has not been started yet by the state NRC coordinator.
The top court had earlier directed the state NRC coordinator to develop a mechanism for issuing rejection slips to people excluded from the final list so that they could approach foreigners tribunals for challenging their rejection.
The state NRC coordinator subsequently informed the RGI in October 2020 that rejection slips could be issued only after the latter notified the final NRC.
The apex court deferred the matter for hearing November 6 after the Assam government sought time to file its response.
The top court was hearing petitions filed by the Assam State Jamiat Ulama, All Assam Minority Students Union, Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind and others seeking rejection slips for those excluded from NRC and NRC cards for those included in the final list.
