Dynamite News
Assam leaves nearly two million people off citizens' list, fate uncertain
Nearly 2 million people have been left off a list of citizens released on Saturday in Assam, after a mammoth years-long exercise to check illegal immigration from neighbouring Muslim-majority Bangladesh.
GUWAHATI: Nearly 2 million people have been left off a list of citizens released on Saturday in Assam, after a mammoth years-long exercise to check illegal immigration from neighbouring Muslim-majority Bangladesh.
Officials checked documents submitted by roughly 33 million people for a draft released last year of a National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam, which left out more than 4 million residents of the state, many of them Hindu. But 31.1 million people now make up the final list, with 1.9 million excluded, said Prateek Hajela, the coordinator of the state’s register.
“Any person who is not satisfied with the outcome of the claims and objections can file an appeal before the foreigners’ tribunals,” Hajela said in a statement, adding that everyone had received an adequate hearing.
Those excluded have 120 days to prove their citizenship at hundreds of regional quasi-judicial bodies known as foreigners’ tribunals. If ruled to be illegal immigrants there, they can appeal to higher courts.(Reuters)