People with vested interests have filed false objections against Bengalis-Hindus, alleges Bengali Student Body

May 8: “Certain people with vested interests are raising false objections against the linguistic minority people whose names have appeared in the final draft NRC. These poor Hindu Bengali citizens have been arrested on the basis of ex-parte judgements despite having enough citizenship proof.” This was alleged by All Assam Bengali Youth Students’ Federation (ABBYSF) in a press conference at its office at Tangla in Udalguri district on Wednesday.

Kamal Choudhury, President of ABBYSF alleged that Bengali Hindus in Assam are being “hounded” in the name of NRC ‘claims and objections’ and the D-voter issue and warned that if such harassment of Hindu Bengalis continues, the ABBYSF will be forced to hit the streets against this “hypocrisy” of the government. He said that those who had filed objections are presently not coming forward for NRC hearing thus raising question marks on the credibility and authenticity of such objections.

As the officials engaged in NRC update process took up the cases of complaints from Monday, they faced problems as objectors were not present during the hearing in most of the cases leading the officials to decide ex-parte.

The final draft NRC published last year excluded over 40 lakh people in Assam due to some discrepancies in their documents submitted to prove their Indian citizenship. While over 36 lakh people filed claims afresh to include their names in the NRC, over two lakh complaints have also been filed by people against other people questioning their Indian citizenship. Interestingly, most of these complaints were filed on a single day—December 31, which was the last date for filing of claims and objections.