Congress demands all-party meeting on NRC

The Congress on Monday said the central government should convene an all-party meeting at the earliest to apprise political parties of the situation arising from publication of the final draft of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) of Assam.

Talking to mediapersons here, Congress leader Anand Sharma said the issue has inter and intra-state dimensions, and can also have external dimensions.

"The government must convene a meeting of all parties to inform them of the situation, the steps it proposes to take until the disposal of the matter," he said.

Sharma said the issue has implications not only for Assam but also for the states of West Bengal, Tripura, Odisha and Meghalaya.

He said the way the NRC exercise has been carried out raises questions on the government's credibility.

"As we have been told, indigenous people have been affected, tea plantation workers have been affected. The government had given a list of 16 documents and any one of them was sufficient. We have been informed an overwhelming number of people had several documents," he said.

Sharma said the issue should not be politicised and the solution can be found in the ambit of the Assam Accord.

The Assam Accord was signed in 1985 between the central and Assam governments on one side, and the All Assam Students' Union (AASU) and the now defunct All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad (AAGSP), which spearheaded the movement, on the other, in the presence of then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

Sharma said jury was out if the central government had presented the case properly in the Supreme Court.

He claimed that Home Minister Rajnath Singh had admitted in his remarks in the Lok Sabha that there were some shortcomings in the process of preparing the NRC.

Singh had said the final draft of NRC that was published on Monday was not the final list and urged the Opposition not to politicise it.

"Whatever work is going on in the NRC, is happening under the supervision of the Supreme Court. To say that the government has done it, and it is inhuman and brutal... such allegations are baseless. It is not the right thing to say," the Home Minister said.

--IANS

ps/pgh/sed