The Assam PCC on Sunday said the BJP was a divided house over the National Register of Citizens (NRC) update.

PCC president Ripun Bora said while the central leadership has been all praise for the NRC and are bent on implementing it across the country, Assam state unit has said it was unacceptable.

“Union home minister and BJP chief Amit Shah has been praising the exercise and the state leadership, including state party chief Ranjeet Kumar Dass and senior minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, have been disapproving of the NRC, passing unwarranted statements which are indeed contempt of the Supreme Court and the Constitution.

“We demand that the chief minister asks Sarma to resign from the responsible position of a minister for violation of the sanctity of the Constitution and the court,” Bora said.

“BJP-ruled states of Delhi and Jharkhand have also complimented the process and expressed willingness to implement NRC in their respective states as well, but the BJP leadership in Assam is making irresponsible comments disapproving of the updated NRC. We do agree that the NRC published is not error-free. But, who did it? It’s the BJP in rule both at Centre as well as the state and it’s the government’s machinery that updated the NRC,” he added.

Former chief minister Tarun Gogoi said it is high time the chief minister speaks up on behalf of his government and not through his minister. “The chief minister is maintaining an eerie silence at this point of time which is unbecoming of his position when a minister is making unwarranted statements,” he said.

“We condemn Sarma’s efforts to communalise the issue and his audacity to dishonour the Constitution and Supreme Court,” both Gogoi and Bora said.

Gogoi and Congress Legislature Party leader Debabrata Saikia pointed at the missing out of names of family members of Kargil War veteran Md Sanaullah, BSF personnel, freedom fighters, MLAs and former MLAs and others as apparent deliberate exclusions “to make the NRC a waste paper.

“I had high hopes when my government started the NRC update process. But, once we went out of power, it appeared to me that the NRC is going to be a waste paper. It is unfortunate for the people of Assam that the governments in power has proved me right by making the NRC a wastepaper in its fullest sense,” Gogoi said, adding: “I am sure over 80 per cent of people are not happy with the updated NRC.”

Bora, in the meantime, demanded a public apology from Shah for stating that over 40 lakh people whose names did not figure in the draft NRC were immigrants. “Now that 22 lakh Indian citizens from those 40 lakh have proved themselves to be Indians, Shah should apologise publicly for his insulting statement as the erstwhile BJP president,” he said.

For the alleged errors in the updated NRC, Saikia held a section of employees involved in the update process responsible. “Not all 52,000 employees committed human errors, but a section did certainly commit mistakes as a result of which genuine Indian citizens have been left out,” he said.