Publication of final NRC not to be stretched beyond July 31: Supreme Court
The court, which perused NRC Coordinator Prateek Hajela's report, ordered “having considered the matter we are of the view that, in no circumstances, the publication of the final NRC should be stretched beyond 31st July, 2019”.
CJI Ranjan Gogoi said the court will talk to the EC Secretary and see what can be done. To this, Mehta replied that the government will consult the Commission and get back to the court.
The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled out extending the deadline for publishing the final National Register for Citizens (NRC) for Assam beyond July 31, and said the process should not be delayed on account of Parliament elections. State NRC Coordinator Prateek Hajela informed the court that the process of filing of claims and objections had concluded on December 31, 2018, and “about 36.2 lakh claims and about 2 lakh objections” had been filed.
The court, which perused Hajela’s report, ordered “having considered the matter we are of the view that, in no circumstances, the publication of the final NRC should be stretched beyond 31st July, 2019”.
The coordinator told the court that the process of hearing claims would commence on February 15 and that 15 days’ notice would be given to the claimants. The process, he said, was likely to take 100 days to complete, but in view of the Parliament elections the publication of the final NRC was likely to be stretched by some more time as officials would be reassigned for election duty.
NRC updation is a mammoth process. More than 50,000 state government employees are employed to work for the NRC. Conducting the NRC process and the general elections in parallel could prove a logistical nightmare. The Supreme Court has said that the optimum number of State Government employees who will be engaged in NRC work and the number of employees who can be engaged in election duty without affecting NRC work must be sorted out between the State Coordinator, the state government and the Election Commission. The order mentions that the Solicitor General of Assam has told the apex court that he will organise a meeting of the three.
But the court did not agree to any extension beyond July 31 and said “both have to be done. It’s not that the NRC process will be stopped because of the elections.”
Appearing for the state government, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said the difficulty was that once the election code comes into force, the Election Commission will have the final say in matters of posting officials.
CJI Ranjan Gogoi said the court will talk to the EC Secretary and see what can be done. To this, Mehta replied that the government will consult the Commission and get back to the court.
The court said its order “insofar as the deployment of government staff, currently engaged in NRC work, for election duty is concerned, we are of the view that both the processes i.e. the preparation of final NRC and the election should receive equal importance and proceeded… simultaneously without one affecting the other”.
“What should the optimum number of State Government employees presently engaged in NRC work who can be legitimately continued in such work and what should be the number of such employees who can be taken out for election duty without affecting the NRC work is a matter that has to be sorted out between the learned State Coordinator, the State Government and the Election Commission,” it said.
The court said the three authorities should meet to resolve this and the report of the outcome be placed before it within seven days. Attorney General K K Venugopal meanwhile told the court that the same officers who initially rejected the claims should not handle the claims again.
The CJI asked Hajela how he would take care of this concern. The coordinator replied that it was being ensured that the “same person does not sit in same area”. Hajela also brought to the attention of the court the manner in which verification of original applications was done and suggested that the same manner be allowed to be adopted in the process of consideration of claims for inclusion.
But the court declined to pass any orders in this regard, and it was leaving the matter to him “to adopt such method/methods as may be considered just, proper and appropriate…” The court will consider the matter on February 5.
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