The BJP governments both at the Centre and in the state seemed to have apprehensions about the updating process under the supervision of the Supreme Court. It had appealed twice to the apex court for sample re-verification to find out wrongful inclusions, especially in districts bordering Bangladesh, and exclusions of persons in the NRC.

The BJP had shifted stands on the NRC earlier too. It had expressed apprehensions about the efficacy of the NRC process when it had begun during Gogoi's tenure, but Sonowal had claimed this year that it was done by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2015 as per his election commitment to the people of Assam.

Sonowal had even visited the NRC headquarters on his first day of office and promised help from the state authorities indicating the importance that his government had accorded to it.

Hoisting the National Flag on Independence Day in 2018, he had iterated his commitment to the NRC, saying: 'We will keep a strong eye so that no name of any foreigner is included in the NRC .... The government is committed to ensure that no Indian citizen living in Assam is excluded from the NRC.'

Sonowal was the president of All Assam Students Union (AASU), which had spearheaded the six-year long Assam Agitation in 1979-85 to detect and deport illegal Bangladeshi immigrants, before joining the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) and then shifting to the BJP.

Assam is the only state in the country where the NRC updating has been undertaken since 1951 under the supervision of the Supreme Court.

In July last year, 40,07,707 names of people were excluded from the complete draft of NRC, which contained 2,89,83,677 eligible persons out of a total 3,29,91,384 applicants. An additional 1,02,462 names were added in the list of excluded persons in June this year taking the total ineligible persons to 41,10,169 in the complete draft.

Now of the around 41 lakh, 19.06 lakh are out of the list.

The cut-off date for legitimate claim to citizenship in Assam, which had faced influx of people from erstwhile undivided Bengal and East Pakistan since the early 20th century, is March 24, 1971.

A total of 19.06 lakh residents of Assam have not made it to the National Register of Citizens or NRC, the office of the state coordinator for the process said this morning.

In all, 3,11,21,004 or 3.11 crore people have been included in the NRC, the statement from the coordinator said. The 3.11 crore residents also include earlier inclusions to the NRC last year.

The first glimpse of the figures show that of the nearly 41 lakh people who were out of the earlier list, about half have been included. It is unclear yet how many of them are Hindus and how many Muslims.

The 19.06 lakh residents now face an uphill process of proving to foreigners' tribunals that they are indeed Indian citizens. The process could take up to a year. If the tribunal refuses to accept the claim of the resident, then s/he has to approach Gauhati High Court for redress.

Many who have been declared foreigners by the tribunals are already in detention camps, and Assam is in the process of making more such camps.

There was speculation before the release of the list that the Assam BJP, which is in power in the state, feared many Hindus would be left out and it would have a problem in its hands.

Before the general elections, BJP chief Amit Shah had pushed hard for the NRC. But he has not spoken on this after becoming the Union home minister in the new government.

Instead the Union home ministry in a statement on August 20 said that non-inclusion of a person's name in the final NRC list does not by itself amount to him or her being declared a foreigner. It also assured that adequate arrangements have been made for appeal against it.

At a high-level meeting chaired by Shah and attended by Assam chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal, the ministry had decided to amend the rules to increase the time limit of filing of appeals in foreigners' tribunals from 60 days to 120 days for those whose names do not figure in the NRC.

'It has been decided that the state government would also make arrangements to provide legal aid to the needy people amongst those excluded from NRC,' the statement said.

Sources in the BJP have said that the change in strategy was necessitated after it came to be known that many suspected illegal immigrants were able to include their names in the citizens register by forging documents and that almost half of the named excluded in the complete draft of NRC were those of Hindus.

'As per available information the final list will not be very different from the complete draft of the NRC. Only 20-25 per cent of the total excluded names will find place in it. This means that a huge number of Hindus will again be excluded from the list,' a source told PTI on condition of anonymity earlier.