NRC in Assam targeting religious minorities: US commission on religious freedom

A federal US commission on international religious freedom has alleged that National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam is a tool to "target religious minorities and to render Muslims stateless".

Observing that the final NRC list, which validates bona fide Indian citizens of Assam, has excluded 19 lakh residents, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) on Friday said that a number of domestic and international organisations have expressed concern that the NRC is a "targeted mechanism to disenfranchise Assam's Bengali Muslim community, implicitly establishing a religious requirement for citizenship and potentially rendering large numbers of Muslims stateless."
The USCIRF in Issue Brief: India released on Friday said the NRC "as a tool to target religious minorities and, in particular, to render Indian Muslims stateless has become one more example of the downward trend in religious freedom conditions within India."
Prepared by policy analyst Harrison Akins, the USCIRF alleged that following the August 2019 release of the NRC, the BJP government has taken steps that "reflect an anti-Muslim bias."