GUWAHATI: Assam Public Works (APW) has lodged an FIR with Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of Assam Police against Prateek Hajela – former state coordinator of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) – alleging manipulation in family tree verification during the updating exercise leading to inclusion of many “illegal and doubtful” persons’ in the list.
APW – an NGO – had moved the Supreme Court in July 2009 which led to the updating of the NRC in Assam.
In the FIR lodged with the additional director general of police, CID on Monday, APW president Aabhijeet Sharma has alleged that Hajela and his close associates in collaboration with few officials having immigrant background, data entry operators, a few minority leaders and some ‘anti-national elements’ manipulated the family tree verification during the NRC updating exercise.
The final draft of NRC was published on August 31, 2019, which excluded over 19 lakh people from the updated NRC.
Of the 3.29 crore people who had sought their names to be included in the NRC, names of 3.11 crore people were included in the list.
“The inclusion of names of a very high percentage of illegal and doubtful persons in the updated NRC pointed to manipulations in the family tree verification.
We suspect that Hajela and his close associates in collaboration with some officials used the government mechanism to insert the names of illegal migrants in the updated NRC,” the FIR said.
Sharma further said the family tree verification did not work properly as most NRC officials working in immigrant-dominated areas belonged to the immigrant community whose citizenship was never verified.
He said the present NRC state coordinator’s affidavits point to wrong uploading of results of family tree matching in 40 per cent of the cases.
This cannot be treated as normal human error; instead, it was a well-planned and well-coordinated effort to include the names of undeserving persons in the NRC, the FIR said, adding: “This is an act of treason towards the nation.” The NRC is a register of all Indian citizens whose purpose is to document all legal citizens of India so that illegal immigrants can be identified and deported.