2 years after NRC list, no end to uncertainty for the excluded

Aadhaar enrolment of 27.43 lakh people has been on hold with no signs of update exercise being taken forward soon

More than 19 lakh out of 3.3 crore applicants were left out of the complete draft of Assam’s (NRC) published on August 31, 2019. But the stagnation of the updating exercise has cast a cloud of uncertainty over 8.37 lakh more people across the State. This is because theof 27,43,396 people collected before the publication of the draft continue to be frozen. “The NRC process should have been taken to its logical conclusion or continued within the schedule. But the suspension of the exercise has denied documents such as Aadhaar card to many while thousands are being deprived of ration cards and other government benefits,” senior advocate Hafiz Rashid Ahmed Choudhury said.