BJP, Congress slam Prateek Hajela

Guwahati (Assam), September 11, 2018:

Assam’s ruling BJP and opposition party Congress made a scathing attack on National Register of Citizens (NRC) state coordinator Prateek Hajela after he had purportedly suggested to the Supreme Court to drop five important documents from the modalities.

Accusing Hajela of misleading the apex court, the leader of Opposition in the Assembly, Debabrata Saikia, demanded that the bureaucrat should be removed from the post of NRC state coordinator. He claimed that Hajela had not monitored the process properly resulting in large-scale anomalies in the draft.

“Many people were excluded from the NRC because there were some officers who had no knowledge of Hindi or Urdu and so, they ignored documents that were written in the two languages. In some places, there were friendly officers who helped people but in some other places the unfriendly officers with a biased motive denied any help to the applicants,” Saikia alleged.

He said the lapses were evident in that people from Bihar, who have been residing in Assam for years, were left out of draft NRC.

“Such people may not have bothered to acquire any of the ten documents suggested by Hajela as admissible legacy/citizenship documents. These people will be branded as foreigners despite being genuine citizens if Hajela’s proposal is accepted. In any case, changing the eligibility criteria at such at an advanced stage of the NRC process is against the demands of natural justice,” he added.

The BJP is also critical of Hajela. Party president Ranjit Kumar Dass also said that many genuine Indian citizens were left out of NRC.

He said the BJP in Assam was not happy with Hajela’s move to drop the five documents from modalities. The documents are voters’ ID, citizenship proof, refugee permit, ration card and NRC of 1951.

Dass said the BJP would take all measures to ensure that no genuine citizen was left out of draft NRC. He demanded the Central and state governments take prompt actions against Hajela.

Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) president Atul Bora urged Hajela to ensure that the name of no foreigner is included. The NRC of 1951 is being updated in Assam to detect illegal immigrants.