A massive exercise is under way in several districts of Assam to reach out to people excluded from the National Register of Citizens (NRC).

The massive reach-out exercise, undertaken by volunteers and activists to help the NRC-excluded with free consultation and legal aid, has already started in terms of conducting awareness programmes, training volunteers and bridging communication gaps by acquainting the volunteers and NRC-excluded.

Shajahan Ali Ahmed, a rights activist from Barpeta, who is formulating the exercise with the help of Human Rights Law Network (HRLN), Guwahati chapter, and Citizens Against Hate (CAH), an NGO, said more than 700 volunteers will reach out to 1,500 people (that is each volunteer will reach out to two people) per day in about 17 districts.

The districts in which the volunteers and activists will set to work are Barpeta, Baksa, Biswanath, Bongaigaon, Chirang, Dhubri, Darrang, Goalpara, Hojai, Kokrajhar, Kamrup (rural), Kamrup (metro), Lakhimpur, Morigaon, Sonitpur, Udalguri and South Salmara.

Fifty volunteers per district will offer help in terms of free consultation, arranging for advocates, aiding with paralegal services, getting access to proper documents, monitoring, helping in understanding the citizenship framework and other works, he added.

The NRC, published on August 31, saw the exclusion of 19,06,657 people.

The NRC-excluded will get a 120-day window to appear before foreigners tribunals in the state from the date of receipt of notices, summoning them to appear before the tribunals. The state at present has 100 FTs while another 200 FTs are expected to become operational shortly.

Ahmed said, “The reach-out exercise has already started through awareness meetings, in helping the people to get acquainted with the volunteers and also through training the people who will be involved in the exercise. At present, we are involved in making a systematic approach so that the exercise is strongly rooted. We are getting certified copies of the voter list for people at a minimum cost. I am glad that both HRLN and CAH will help us with the exercise.”

He said the reach-out exercise will cover all issues within the gambit of citizenship crisis such as cases related to foreigners, doubtful voters and others. He said problems in legacy linkage and clerical mistakes in filing during the NRC process were some of the factors that proved detrimental for some of the people for inclusion in the NRC.

“We will continue with the exercise until the issue is solved. It will be a lengthy one. Most of the people are poor and illiterate. This was a major problem for them. We will involve people from different ethnic communities in reaching out to the people,” Ahmed added.