India can’t be refugee capital of world, Centre tells SC on NRC matter

New Delhi, July 19: India cannot be the refugee capital of the world, the Centre has told the Supreme Court.

The Centre requested the court to allow the sample re-verification to the extent of 20 per cent. The Centre said that lakhs of people have been wrongly included into the final draft of the NRC, especially in those districts bordering Bangladesh. This has happened due to complicity with local officers.

The coordinator on the other hand sought further time to finalise the NRC. He also cited floods in the state of Assam for the delay and added that only a supplementary list can be published on July 31, 2019. The coordinator also added that during the sample re-verification of the family tree, around 80 lakh people were automatically re-verified and this amounted to 27 per cent re-verification claims.

The court sought to know given this fact, is there any need of another round of verification. The court adjourned hearing to next Tuesday to enable the Solicitor General to go through the reports by the NRC coordinator and respond in an appropriate manner.

The Centre had urged the court for more time so that a sample re-verification process could be conducted. The application stated that a 20 per cent sample re-verification of the names should be conducted in the in the districts bordering Bangladesh and a 10 per cent sample re-verification in the remaining districts.

It may be recalled that in May the court had made it clear that it will not extend the July 31 deadline for finalisation of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam.

A bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice R F Nariman also gave a "free hand" to Prateek Hajela, Assam NRC coordinator dealing with claims and objections of persons against wrong exclusion or inclusion of citizens in the NRC.

The direction came after Hajela informed the bench that many persons, who had objected to inclusion of certain individuals in the draft NRC are not coming forward before panels which are dealing with such complaints.

The draft Assam NRC was published on July 30, 2018 in which the names of 2.89 crore of the 3.29 crore people were included. The names of 40,70,707 people did not figure in the list. Of these, 37,59,630 names have been rejected and the remaining 2,48,077 are on hold.