Assam’s NRC Officials ‘Fudging’ Data to Make People Indian or Foreigner?

Editor’s Note: This story is a part of our series on how the names of people of Assam are being included or dropped from the National Register of Citizens (NRC) by an allegedly arbitrary and flawed implementation of the process of determining their Indian citizenship. During an extensive tour of Assam by Newsclick team, rampant complaints that authorities are fudging data to make the final list public before the revised deadline of July 31, 2018 emerged. Here’s the story of a young man who complained that his family’s papers were being fudged by NRC officials to accommodate others. He agreed to be video graphed provided the film is not made public. We have withheld his name to protect his identity.

He is in his mid-30s and works for an optical fiber company in Guwahati. He said that he got a call from an NRC official asking him to come to a designated place to receive a notice. When he reached there, the officer reportedly told him that he was summoned because the Legacy Code – mentioned by him to establish his ancestral link – has been claimed by another family. And therefore, the officer said, he has been called for clarification.

Legacy Data is the 1951 National Register of Citizens and all the electoral rolls up to 24 March 1971. These are digitized and available for searching. If you want to establish your citizenship today, you have to locate your ancestors in Legacy Data. Once the documents are found, they are uniquely identified by an 11-digit Legacy Data Code which is like a PNR number for your rail or air travel booking. It contains all the information about any person whose name appears in the Legacy Data. Once a match with the name of the ancestor is found, a Legacy Data slip is issued to the applicant. It is required to be quoted by the applicant who wants his/her name included in the updated NRC.

The officer’s statement is perplexing – there can’t be two families, unknown to each other, with the same Legacy Data Code!

“I was called with relevant papers at a certain date at a government school in Guwahati. When I reached there, I found that other members of my family such as my mother, her brother and elder sister, including others, have also been called. I found that another family, who were Hindus, were already sitting there. They too had claimed our Legacy Code in their application form to get them enrolled in the NRC list,” he told Newsclick.

Also Watch: Assam’s NRC Mix-Up: Certified Indian Abdul Kaddus’ Ongoing Struggle to Prove Citizenship

He said, “As per the procedure, the official deputed to verify our credentials as an Indian citizen asked several questions to verify the links with our ancestors whose names are mentioned in the list against the unique code. Despite the fact that our legacy was verified, the officer kept pressurising us to include the names of the members of the other family in the list so that their names can also be easily included.”

Applicants are also supposed to give a written declaration identifying other family members saying: “I (any member of the family) know each one of them and their relationship with the person”.
The officer reportedly wanted the man and his family to identify members of the other family as part of his own family. He said that he and other members of his family refused to do so and gave a written declaration that they don’t know the other family members.

“After I gave a written statement declaration that I (my name), S/O (my father’s name), know the other persons of my family and mentioned their relationship with me, my sister’s turn came. The NRC official dictated her to write that in addition to us, she knows members of the other family also who are not even remotely related to us. The purpose was to get their names covered under our legacy code. When I objected, the officer offered an apology saying that they did it by mistake,” he alleged.

“I objected,” he says, “because I and all members of my family are educated and we know what to write and where to put signature”. But uneducated people in villages don’t know it, he said, and they easily succumb to the pressure and threat. “Since they don’t know how to read and write, they have to put their thumb and palm impressions on the declaration written by others,” he added.

“This is how documents are fudged and people’s name are included or excluded from the NRC list,” said he.

Also Watch: Assam: How 'Biased' Implementation of NRC Project Ruining Families, Separating Parents from Children

Newsclick tried to meet NRC State Co-ordinator Prateek Hajela but he was not in the city as he had come to Delhi to file an affidavit seeking extension of the date of the publication of final draft from June 30 to July 31 this year. Another officer, who spoke to us at length, rubbished the allegation and said, “These are all rumours and don’t pay heed to such claims. We are working in completely unbiased manner and committed that no genuine Indian citizen will be declared foreigner.”

But even two-time former Chief Minister of Assam, Prafulla Kumar Mahanta of the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), an ally of the BJP government in Assam, told Newsclick.in an exclusive interview that some officers might have gone wrong on the NRC.

It is worth mentioning here that almost everyone in Assam is supporting the NRC but there is a wide scale outrage at its implementation. Majority of them accuse the NRC officials, including Hajela, of being partisan.

If the allegations are true, it raises serious questions. We have earlier reported that thousands of people have had their citizenship stripped on account of minor discrepancies in paperwork. Many stateless people are either languishing in state’s six detention camps, which are district jails, pending deportation, while some are on the run.