Nagaland forms panel on listing indigenous inhabitants

The NRC-like exercise seeks to filter out the non-original residents of the State

The Nagaland government has decided to form a joint consultative committee (JCC) involving all traditional tribal bodies and, civil society organisations for taking an exercise to register the State’s indigenous inhabitants. The decision was taken at a meeting the government had organised on Friday with leaders of the community-based and social organisations as well as political parties in State capital Kohima on the issue of preparing the Register of Indigenous Inhabitants of Nagaland (RIIN). In July 2019, the Nagaland government launched the RIIN, seen as a variant of Assam’s National Register of Citizens that excluded 19.06 lakh people out of about 3.3 crore applicants. The exercise was put on hold after some civil society and extremist groups opposed its stated objective of preventing outsiders from obtaining fake indigenous certificates for seeking jobs and benefits of government schemes.