Guwahati: NRC Assam coordinator Prateek Hajela has gone about doing his job quietly since the Supreme Court, which has been monitoring the NRC update, barred him from talking to the media without its permission. Saturday was no different.

Hajela came to his heavily guarded office at 9.55am in his personal car, as the official vehicle broke down on Friday night, so that the final NRC list could be released at 10am as scheduled. List released, he got down to stock-taking mode to ensure everything was smooth at the NRC seva kendras spread across the state.

There was no media interaction, unlike the one held during the release of the complete draft in July 2018. This time, Hajela simply issued a one-page release on the exclusions and inclusions and said those “not satisfied with the outcome of the claims and objections, could appeal before the foreigners tribunals”.

Calls for reaction were politely declined.

However, those who know the 49-year-old senior bureaucrat told The Telegraph that Hajela was “hugely relieved” at “pulling off the impossible”, as not only was the NRC a mammoth exercise but there was a lot of pressure to do a good job day in and day out for over four years now.

The last few months, especially after the Supreme Court rejected the government’s demand for re-verification, were tough.

Hajela was targeted both within and outside the Assembly for “doing things his own way”, without keeping the government in the loop. However, they did say that apart from being relieved, he was also confident of the numbers reflected in the final NRC as it was arrived at through “scientific methods of verification”.

They said Hajela had not been talking to the media because he was reporting to the apex court. He says what he has to say to the apex court, which has backed him to the hilt, they said.

But he has his own way of hitting out at his detractors. They cited an August 29 letter written by Hajela to the Sachetan Nagarik Mancha, which had approached the President seeking an assurance that the updated NRC would include all genuine Indian citizens and exclude all illegal migrants or “foreigners”.

Refuting the Mancha’s allegations against him point by point, Hajela’s letter said these were not supported by “an iota of evidence” and were aimed at “misleading the public of Assam in a sensitive matter like updating of the NRC”. Clearly, Hajela’s silence is speaking volumes.