GUWAHATI, Nov 20: The Assam Government has welcomed Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s announcement of a fresh NRC in Assam. State Finance, Health and PWD Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, while welcoming the announcement, asked the central government to reject the citizens’ register published on Aug 31 and to apply one cut-off year for the entire country for the new exercise.
“The NRC that was published earlier this year cannot be accepted since people whose names should not have entered have made their way to the citizens’ list while people who should have been included were left out. Now that Home Minister Amit Shah has announced to update the NRC in the whole country and include Assam in the fresh exercise, we want to make two points: to reject the earlier NRC and to fix one cut-off year for the entire country. If it’s 1971 for Assam, it should be the same for the entire country and if the cut-off year is 1951 for the whole country, the same should be for Assam as well,” Sarma said in Guwahati.
WATCH VIDEO:
The final NRC that was published on Aug 31 this year had left out 19.06 lakh people while 3.11 crore were included. The exercise that was monitored by the apex court, however, became the subject of a massive row amid allegations of foreigners entering Assam after the cut-off date of March 25, 1971, getting their names into the NRC while genuine citizens, most of them from indigenous communities, were allegedly excluded.
