Lukewarm response from states on NRC verification: Hajela

Authorities have received lukewarm response from other states regarding verification of documents for updating National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam.
"We are not getting good response from other states. We have sent 2.68 lakh documents to 28 states for verification. Out of this, only around 5,000 documents have come back to us verified," NRC Assam Coordinator Prateek Hajela said at a press conference here.
The NRC officials were still screening the 6.63 crore documents received from the people and a total of around five lakh would go to other states for verification, he said.
"We will raise this issue in front of the Supreme Court also, because all states should cooperate in this process. We will send our persons to other state in future to collect the verified documents," Hajela said.

Response from Tripura has been so far the best with the authorities receiving 1,049 documents out of 25,008 sent for verification, while that from Bihar was the worst with no verified copy received so far out of 31,380 papers, he said.
NRC authorities have received 30 verified documents out of 64,547 from West Bengal, 542 out of 49,692 from Nagaland, 493 out of 34,438 from Meghalaya, 290 out of 33,486 from Arunachal Pradesh, 479 out of 7,025 from Uttar Pradesh, 858 out of 6,509 from Rajasthan, 103 out of 6,302 from Manipur, four out of 3,025 from Delhi and 345 out of 1,953 from Mizoram.

Hajela said authorities have received 47 verified documents out of 100 from Odisha, 47 out of 51 from Sikkim, two out of two from Chandigarh and one out of one from Himachal Pradesh among others.

He said out of a total 6.63 documents received from the people, 4.55 crore have been verified.
"This is a very complex and time consuming process. We need to check the documents from across the country. But, even if it takes time, we will complete this process efficiently," Hajela said.
He said 97 per cent of field verification of people have been completed and the remaining would be over soon.

"We have received 68.23 lakh documents for legacy data. We are digitising the documents and hope start verifying the Family Tree within a month," Hajela said adding, 137 cases have been registered against fake and forged documents.
When asked about a timeline to complete the entire update process, Hajela said the authorities would inform about the progress of the work to the Supreme Court.
"Once the Supreme Court approves the new timeline, we will publish it," he said.
Talking about inclusion of names in the NRC, Hajela assured that no original inhabitants would be left out although NRC was for checking the citizenship of a person, not originality.

He also clarified that minority refugees would not be included in the NRC and they would be declared citizens only as per existing laws.
Asked about fund crunch, Hajela said "If the finance continues, it is good. For some time it was not happening, but now everything has become normal."
The NRC authority has received Rs 288.18 crore out of its demand for Rs 793.89 crore, he added.