Kumar Bahukhandi
Guwahati: The Assam government has announced that the Aadhaar card will be issued to only those who had applied for the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in 2014.
Informing that the decision is part of a larger drive by the Assam government to check the influx, Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Saturday pointed out that in some of the minority dominated districts like Dhubri, Barpeta and Morigaon,the total number of Aadhaar cards issued exceeds the projected population for these districts.
He said that in these three districts – all three of which are Muslim-majority – the percentage of Aadhaar cards issued against the projected population figures are 103%, 103% and 101% for Dhubri, Barpeta and Morigaon, respectively.
Arguing that it could be easily assumed that that “suspected foreigners” have also accessed Aadhaar cards in these districts, Mr Sarma that because of this, the state government has decided to issue a standard operating protocol for future issuance of Aadhaar cards, which will make it mandatory for one to furnish their NRC application number, which had been provided to them while applying in 2015.
It is significant that at the intervention of the Supreme Court, the NRC was updated in Assam in 2019 but it was yet to be published.
The chief minister said that while it is the Central government which issues Aadhaar, it has given the Assam government some amount of discretionary power by making it necessary for a no-objection certificate from the District Collector concerned.
He also clarified, “The question of whether the person’s name was included or excluded from the NRC is a different thing, but one who is an applicantin NRC will get an Aadhaar card in Assam. If one hadn’t even applied, that implies that he wasn’t even in Assam. From that, it can prima facie be taken that the person had entered Assam after 2014…. From October 1, the availability of Aadhaar cards in Assam will be a difficult test… We will issue a tough SOP in the next 10-15 days
In Assam 3,30,27,661 people had applied for NRC in between March and August 2015. In the final NRC, published in August 2019, 19 lakh of these applicants had been excluded. However, that NRC is yet to be notified.
