Nava Thakuria
A recent discussion, initiated by Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma with the leaders of All Assam Students’ Union trying to resolve the explanation of an Asomiya, received widespread response from the people of northeast India.
State government agreed that Asomiya should encompass indigenous tribal families, other indigenous communities of Assam, Indian citizens residing in the territory on or before 1 January 1951 and naturally their descendants. The meeting also witnessed a rigorous discussion to implement Clause 6 of Assam Accord that indicates constitutional, legislative and administrative safeguards to protect, preserve and promote ‘the cultural, social, linguistic identity and heritage of the Assamese people.
Sarma also recently talked about the National Register of Citizens (NRC), where the saffron leader argued that the 1951 NRC should be updated across India. He also opined that the issue of NRC update should be discussed in the Parliament for a pragmatic way of actions. One can remember, the then State NRC coordinator Prateek Hajela released the final NRC draft for Assam on the midnight of 31 August 2019.
However, the NRC supplementary list continues with ‘yet to be endorsed by the Registrar General of India’ status. Later the NRC updating process embraced a scam of Rs 260 crore, which was detected by the highest national audit body (Comptroller and Auditor General of India), where it recommended legal actions against Hajela and Wipro limited.
The NRC left out 19 lakhs people, who either did not apply or could not place valid documents to prove Indian citizenship. Suspicions had arisen that Hajela used tampered software to include millions of Bangladeshi Muslims to the NRC in exchange of a huge volume of foreign money. Some Guwahati-based television journalists tried to project the NRC draft as flawless and the final one. The probable beneficiaries of the NRC scam tried to project Hajela as a super bureaucrat. They insisted that Assam should accept the cut-off year (1951) mentioned in the Assam Accord without any debate.
Hitesh Devsarma, the immediate successor of Hajela as the State NRC coordinator, lodged two FIRs against Hajela demanding a high level probe over the NRC updating process as it involved a huge volume of government money and also the national security. He also submitted an affidavit in the Supreme Court regarding the NRC issue, but it has not been heard yet. The apex court may pronounce a verdict on Asom Sanmilita Mahasangha’s petition on the base year for Assam by this year itself. Till then, the majority of Asomiya people weighed 1951 as the year to detect illegal foreigners in Assam as well.
(The author is a senior journalist based at Guwahati in Patna)
