Even as the Election Commission (EC) announced the schedule for the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in 12 states and Union Territories, including those going to polls next year, it excluded Assam citing the National Register of Citizens (NRC) process in the state and this prompted a war of words between the BJP and the Congress.
“Assam has a separate provision in India’s citizenship laws. The second thing is that the Supreme Court-monitored citizenship identification process is about to conclude. In such a situation, the June 24 SIR order, which applied to the whole country, is not applicable to Assam. Revision instructions for the state will be issued separately,” said Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar.
BJP spokesperson Rupam Goswami said the party welcomes the SIR “whenever the EC is ready to hold it in Assam,” while state Leader of Opposition and Congress leader Debabrata Saikia questioned the decision.
“The NRC process is far from being concluded. Once the Registrar General of India (RGI) notifies it, the process of claims for inclusion among those who have been rejected is supposed to take place, which is not even initiated. So, it is hard to understand their reasoning. The EC has proved itself to be an agent of the ruling party through the 2023 delimitation process by compressing minority voters into 22 highly populated constituencies,” he said.
Kumar’s remarks are in line with a July report in The Indian Express that said the Assam government had told the EC that since it was the only state to have carried out the NRC, the exercise must be factored in whenever the poll panel frames timelines and decides the list of eligibility documents for SIR in the state. Sources told The Indian Express at the time that the Himanta Biswa Sarma-led BJP government had said the NRC, once published, could serve as one of the admissible documents for the SIR.
On Monday, a state election commission official told The Indian Express that pre-SIR activities such as mapping and locating voters in previous voter lists were going on. “We have been preparing while assuming that the SIR will begin in Assam along with other states going to polls next year. Since the EC has not indicated the timeline for Assam, we will continue with the preparations and wait for the notification,” the official said.
Linking the SIR process in Assam to the NRC could mean a delay, since it has been stuck in limbo since the publication of the draft NRC in 2019, which excluded 19.6 lakh of the 3.3 crore applicants. The Registrar General of India (RGI) has yet to notify it, and both the BJP-led state governments since then have maintained that they do not find it acceptable in its current form, pressing for sample reverification.
The Assam government has maintained that the inclusions and exclusions in it are erroneous, and that the list excludes “indigenous people” while including large numbers of “foreigners.” It has also argued that the number of people who entered the state illegally after March 24, 1971 – the cut-off date for the NRC – is far higher than 19 lakh.
