The final Assam citizens' list will be published online on Saturday (Aug 31), over a year after the first list that identifies whether a person is an Indian or a foreigner was released, reports NDTV.
The names of over 4.1 million people don't appear in the Assam NRC which makes the announcement of the final NRC list is likely to be the biggest development in Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's second term, after Delhi's move to scrap special status from Jammu and Kashmir and divide it into two union territories.
"The list would be available online by 10 am and those who do not have internet connections can go to Seva Kendras set up by the state government to check their status," a senior officer in the Indian Home Ministry told NDTV on Friday (Aug 30).
Unprecedented security measures have been taken in Assam ahead of the publication of the final list of the central government’s National Register of Citizens (NRC).
“Ahead of NRC’s final list release, we have taken care of all the security arrangements. Police and other security forces have also been briefed about the arrangements. Superintendents of Police in all districts have sensitized police personnel in order to assure proper security arrangements,” Kuladhar Saikia, Director General of Police (DGP), Assam told ANI on Thursday (Aug 29).
“We hope that the citizens of Assam will support the legal process and I believe this entire process will be completed peacefully,” Saikia added.
The National Register of Citizens (NRC), first published in Assam in 1951, is being updated as per directions of the Supreme Court of India to segregate Indian citizens living in Assam from those who have illegally entered the state from Bangladesh after Mar 25, 1971.
Last month, the Supreme Court of India had extended the deadline for the final publication of National Register of Citizens from Jul 31 to Aug 31. It had rejected a plea to extend the National Register of Citizens deadline for sample verification.
When the draft citizen list was published on Jul 30, 2018, there was a huge controversy over the exclusion of 4.7 million people from it. The draft list included the names of 29 million people out of the total of 32.9 million applications.
In the list published in Jun 2019, over 100,000 people were excluded.
