NATIONWIDE NRC is not decided: Govt
AMID nationwide protest for and against NRC, the government has informed the people that no move has been taken in this direction. It affirmed in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday that no decision has been taken for conducting the exercise. “Till now, the government has not taken any decision to prepare the National Register of Indian Citizens at the national level,” Minister of State for Home Nityanand Rai said replying to a written question. On December 22, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said his government has never discussed NRC since coming to power for the first time in 2014. It has been discussed neither in Parliament nor in the Cabinet, he added. The Supreme Court-monitored exercise of updating the NRC was carried out only in Assam. The final NRC, a list of Assam’s residents published on August 31, 2019, excluded names of 19 lakh people mostly belonging to the Hindu community. President Ram Nath Kovind also avoided mentioning about to NRC in his address to the joint sitting of Parliament at the beginning of the Budget Session on Friday. On June 20, 2019, soon after the formation of the new Lok Sabha, Kovind had said the Modi government decided to implement the process of NRC on a “priority basis”.
Kovind had said illegal infiltrators posed a major threat to India’s internal security and this was leading to social imbalance in many parts of the country as well as putting a huge pressure on limited livelihood opportunities is being interpreted by opposition parties as an effort to deport the Bangladeshi Muslims who had arrived in India minus any documents and living mostly in West Bengal, Assam and other parts of the country. Under the Assan Accord of 1985, NRC has been conducted in the north-eastern state with the cut-off date of March 25, 1971. Under its guidelines, those who arrived in India from Bangladesh till the deadline will be considered as Indian citizens. Ruling NDA headed by BJP and its allies remain skeptical about nationwide NRC after Assam. Congress, TMC and other political parties have launched agitations against NRC.
