Final draft of the National Register of Citizens has been published.
How government addressed concerns with NRC?
After the release of NRC draft there were various concerns with the state government and the people of the region regarding the omission of names from the NRC.
It appears that the apprehensions that there would be a large-scale deletion of names in the Bengali-dominated areas of the Barak and Brahmaputra Valley have not been substantiated by the final NRC list.
To address this union government has assured that mere omission of names from the NRC did not amount to being labelled a foreigner.
Those left out of the NRC would be able to file claims before September 28 with a hint that this date could be further extended.
Most of the Assamese nationalist organisations also have declared that they would help all those Indian citizens whose names have not figured in the NRC.
What are the positive reactions to NRC?
Minority organisations in Assam see the NRC as a final vindication of their several decades-long struggle to rid the state of foreign nationals.
For them, this appears to be the beginning of a closure of an issue that has bogged the state since Independence.
NRC has create a new hope, as most of the pre-1971 immigrants of East Pakistan/ Bangladesh origin who have been living all these years with the tag of a foreigner have now found a place in the citizens’ register.
This is also true of most of the other districts of the Brahmaputra and Barak Valleys where large masses of people long seen as illegal migrants from Bangladesh and looked upon with suspicion have now been cleared of stigma and accepted as citizens at par with the state’s indigenous people.
What is the way forward?
Whether it would really be a closure remains to be seen, especially because of the immense humanitarian dimensions involved in making lakhs of people stateless.
Major change in the AASU’s usual rhetoric appears quite toned down because it would like to take along with it all the stakeholders in the process, including minority organisations which it had long considered as enemies.
It is near certain that after all the claims and objections are dealt with, the actual number of deletions will substantially come down.
But even then, there would be a massive number of stateless persons, necessitating a well-coordinated, nationwide move to work out a solution within humanitarian parameters.
