NRC: Supreme Court rains anger on central government

February 5: The Supreme Court on Tuesday came down heavily on the Union Home Ministry (MHA) over its request to withdraw Central forces deployed in Assam for the National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise citing Lok Sabha elections. The court told the government that if it wanted the citizen register process to go on there were “1001 ways to do so”.

Appearing for the Centre, Attorney General KK Venugopal said the NRC exercise might have to be extended by two more weeks as forces from the state had to be withdrawn and redeployed. However, the CJI rejected the request and reiterated that the deadline for publishing the final NRC for Assam won’t be extended beyond July 31.

The government sought the suspension of the NRC process to which court said “it is too much to ask for both”. The top court ordered that elections and NRC should go on simultaneously. Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi said, “The Home Ministry is coming up with all sorts of excuses to delay the NRC (National Register of Citizens) process in Assam. The entire effort of the Home Ministry is to destroy the process of NRC. Should we summon the Home Secretary? Because AG and SG are not briefed properly.”

The top court had said on January 24 that the July 31, 2019 deadline to finalise the NRC for Assam cannot be extended. The court’s observation came while dismissing a plea for withdrawal of 167 companies of combined armed forces. The court added that the central forces can’t be withdrawn from Assam. The SC asked the Election Commission to consider exempting certain state officers from election duty to ensure that the NRC process is not hampered.

The final draft National Register of Citizens for Assam was published on July 30, 2018 in which the names of 2.89 crore of the 3.29 crore people were included. The names of 40,70,707 people did not figure in the list.