NRC: NGO seeks inclusion of residency verification

Guwahati: The Assam Public Works (APW), which is spearheading an exercise to cleanse the state of illegal migrants through the judiciary, has petitioned the Supreme Court to order the inclusion of an additional modality of ‘residency verification’ while verifying the applications for updating the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in the state.
According to APW’s proposal, the residency of an applicant for the last 46 years should be verified during the NRC verification process as this is the only measure to detect illegal migrants.
Petitioner for APW Abhijit Sharma told TOI, “We filed an additional affidavit on Wednesday seeking the Supreme Court’s intervention in making the NRC application verification process a waterproof exercise so that illegal migrants do not succeed in registering their names in the NRC.”
“The next date of hearing is on November 5 and we are hopeful of an order in this regard from the court on that day. We have also submitted a proposal of the modality for residency verification,” Sharma said.
Sharma, in the additional affidavit, has stated, “It is of vital national interest and survival of the state of Assam, that the scrutiny of the ‘applications’ of NRC is carried out most stringently and we hereby furnish a Modality of Scrutiny of the NRC Applications for the Hon’ble Court’s perusal.”
He said the modality for investigation and verification must place emphasis on the ‘Residency Report’ of an applicant for the last 46 years.
“Verification of residential status is the key to detecting post-1971 Bangladeshi foreigners who are masquerading as Indians. We have to know where a person and his forefathers were residing in 1970, for how long he has been residing in his present household, if the applicant has stayed in this present household for less than 45 years (i.e. up to 1971) and where he or his father or grandfather had been residing before. These questions and verification will clearly fix the prima facie status of citizenship of an applicant,” Sharma said.