Draft, And After

With the first draft out, the Assamese are anxiously waiting for the final version of the state’s controversial National Register of Citizens

- Seema Hussain

At midnight on December 31, the Assamese called time on celebrations and tuned in to the telecast of a historic news briefing. Registrar General of India Sailesh and the state coordinator of the National Register of Citizens, Prateek Hajela, released the first draft of the updated NRC. There were 3.29 crore applicants; the NRC has 1.9 crore names.

Sailesh had been camping in Guwahati for long to oversee this sensitive exercise. It was announced at the news briefing that citizens could check the list at any of the 2,500 Seva Kendras statewide, starting 8am on January 1, 2018. So, at dawn on New Year's Day, most Assamese queued up at Seva Kendras. Assam is the only state to have prepared an NRC; data came from the census of 1951.

The current draft is an update of NRC 1951. So, NRC 2018 will have all names that were on NRC 1951 and names on any electoral roll of Assam—as on March 24, 1971. The list will also feature Indian citizens who have settled in Assam after March 24, 1971. Descendants of all the above categories will automatically enter NRC 2018. According to the Assam Accord of 1985, March 24, 1971, was the cut-off date to regularise migration into the state.

It was the All Assam Students’ Union's long-standing demand that NRC 1951 be updated. Elated AASU office-bearers opened a booth at its Guwahati head office at December 31 midnight itself, to help people check their status. AASU was at the forefront of the anti-foreigners movement that resulted in the Assam Accord of 1985.