Mamata Banerjee asks Rajnath Singh to amend NRC or bring new bill

The worst fears of Mohammed Haq, a fisherman from Nalbari district in lower Assam, came true on Monday as the 56-year-old discovered that his name was missing from the National Register of Citizens’ (NRC) draft list.

The Supreme Court has ordered that no coercive action should be taken anyone on the basis of final draft National Register of Citizens (NRC) of Assam. Law and order must be maintained at any cost in the follow-up to this draft.

“In my opinion most of those whose names have been excluded are genuine Indian citizens and in this list people across communities have been excluded including many Hindus and Bengali speaking people”, Gogoi told PTI here. The draft NRC had said that 3,29,91,384 people had applied for the NRC, while applications of 2,89,83,677 were accepted.

‘They are openly threatening to get rid of Muslims, and what happened to the Rohingya in Myanmar, could happen to us here’. The situation can not be tolerated.

The issue rocked the parliament as well.

During his campaign in the state as the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) prime ministerial candidate, Modi had said Bangladeshi infiltrators, precisely Muslims, will be thrown out of Bengal. Party chief Amit Shah expressed his confidence over the BJP-led Union government and applauded PM Modi while giving him a laddu.

Not satisfied withHome Minister’s reply, the opposition members including Congress, Left, TMC, RJD and SP staged a walkout from the House. “Indian politics is about tolerance”, she said.

A first draft published last December included only 19 million people as legal citizens. “I do not see any possibility of Assam’s NRC revision impacting Tripura’s demographic balance”, state BJP spokesperson Mrinal Kanti Deb said.

“We have to stage a protest together irrespective of our political colour”. Only after the disposal of claims and objections, the final NRC will be published.

Activists and experts say the NRC process is not likely to solve the contentious citizenship issue as tens of thousands of people who have been marked as “Doubtful” or “D” voters, their descendants and those With pending cases in the Foreigners’ Tribunal are not being considered by the NRC authorities.

On Monday, Mannan and Chakraborty had demanded that a motion be brought in the Assembly to discuss the issue.

Citizens left off the list will be able to appeal from August 30 to September 28, according to Sailesh, the registrar general of India, who goes by a single name.

The people left out will now have three options to stake claim to citizenship.

Muslim women stand in a queue to check if their names are included in the National Register of Citizens at a draft center in Mayoung.

Following an outcry from rights groups over possible harassment of Muslims in Assam, Interior Minister Rajnath Singh said that the NRC exercise was being carried out in an impartial and transparent manner.

Those who will support the illegal immigrants will also be thrown out of the country, he said.

Chaos and confusion have engulfed the northeastern state, which borders Bangladesh, as over four million people had their names excluded from the NRC list.