Senior Supreme Court advocate and activist Upamanyu Hazarika on Monday contested the repeated claims of the BJP-led central and Assam governments about securing the future of the state’s indigenous communities.

The BJP-led governments at the Centre and in the state, Hazarika pointed out, always claim they are working in the interest of the Assamese people but they have not even completed the re-verification of the National Register of Citizens (NRC), a register of Indian citizens despite its former coordinator Hitesh Dev Sharma flagging “serious errors” in the register before the apex court in 2021.

He said the state government too “acknowledged” the NRC containing a “large” number of foreigners illegally staying in the state but no steps were taken for its re-verification and to “exclude the estimated 60 lakhs who’ve been included.”

Hazarika said the Centre can undertake re-verification without the approval of the Supreme Court under whose supervision the exercise was carried out.

The NRC published on August 31, 2019, excluded 1906657 of the 3.29 crore applicants. They can move the foreigners’ tribunals once they get their rejection slips to contest their exclusion. Neither the excluded have received their rejection slips nor the NRC notified till date after objections were raised from within and outside the government about the exercise being “flawed”.

“Re-verification of the NRC is particularly important as the indigenous population in Assam are projected to be a minority by 2040. Even though large-scale anomalies and fraud were evident throughout the NRC process, however, the obsession with CAA, led to such fraud being overlooked and enabled majority of the foreigners to find their way into the NRC. Even though, the previous NRC coordinator Hitesh Dev Sarma filed a detailed report in the Supreme Court, demonstrating subversion of NRC with specific data, this has been ignored,” Hazarika said.

While the cut-off date for inclusion in the NRC was March 24, 1971, the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) expedites the process for granting Indian citizenship to persecuted non-Muslims from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan who entered India without papers before December 31, 2014.

Hazarika also recalled how the “riveting” challenge to Bangladeshis to pack their bags and be ready to leave Assam by then Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi in the run-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, “defined and shaped” the political discourse for that and subsequent elections “but there has been no progress on this front”.

“What we are witnessing in this election is that parties are competing for the migrant Muslim vote in Assam. Chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, soliciting support of the migrant Muslim votes, advises them to ‘indigenise’ themselves by adopting local customs and habits,” Hazarika said.

The Opposition parties, on the other hand, “remind” the migrant Muslims about the abuses heaped on them by Shri Sarma earlier and that their primary enemy is the BJP. On the other hand, by promulgating CAA, the Bangladeshi Hindu vote is being attracted to.

He said the “antidote” to check the threat posed by illegal migrants, especially Bangladesh, is the “protective safeguards recommended” by the MHA-constituted Biplab Kumar Sarma (retired Gauhati HC Justice) panel under Clause 6 of the 1985 Assam Accord. The panel had recommended reservation in land, employment and trade, among others, “for those included in the 1951 NRC or their descendants”. “But all political parties have consigned this report, submitted to the state government on February 25, 2020, to the dustbin. In fact, now the chief minister advises the migrant Muslims on ways to become indigenous!” he said.