Hajela to give a presentation to SC on five NRC documents’ exclusion

Guwahati, October 26, 2018:

After directed by the Supreme Court, the state coordinator of National Register of Citizens (NRC), Prateek Hajela, is preparing a power-point presentation to explain why he recommended excluding five documents from NRC modalities for filing of claims and objections.

During a hearing on Tuesday on the documents for filing of claims and objections, the Supreme Court had said, “To enable all stakeholders to respond to the stand taken by Prateek Hajela in his report dated 4th October, which would require a deep insight into the mechanism of the manual family tree, as well as the computer family tree which is the basic exercise that was undertaken before preparation of the final draft NRC, we direct Prateek Hajela, learned Coordinator, NRC, Assam, to give a power-point presentation of the manner in which he had proceeded in preparation of the manual and the computer family tree for the purposes of deciding on the inclusion of names in the draft NRC.”

After completion of the presentation, he will give it to the officials of Government of Assam and the "Union of India".

The briefing on the power-point presentation is scheduled at 6 pm on Friday and it is expected that Attorney General KK Venugopal, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, Assam Chief Secretary Alok Kumar and senior advocate Kapil will be present.

The objections in written by the stakeholders will have to be brought on record on or before October 30 and the next date of hearing is scheduled for November 1.

Hajela had on Tuesday submitted a report stating that the five documents should not be allowed to be used for claiming inclusion in NRC. The documents are NRC of 1951, refugee registration certificate, certified copies of pre-1971 electoral roll, particularly, those issued from the state of Tripura, certified copies of pre-1971 electoral roll and ration card.

The SC in a hearing held earlier had allowed the filing of claims and objections based on ten documents. It kept the issue of reliance on the aforesaid five documents open and asked Hajela to give his views on the permissibility of placing reliance on these documents