"National Register Of Citizens Manipulated": Complaint With Assam CID

"This is an act of treason towards the nation," Assam NGO APW has said, making the allegations against former state NRC Coordinator Prateek Hajela.

A former Assam Coordinator of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) has been accused by an NGO of "treason" for allegedly manipulating data to include "illegal" persons in the list. The Assam Public Works (APW) has lodged a complaint against the officer with the state police's Criminal Investigation Department (CID). The NRC is a register of all Indian citizens whose creation is mandated by a 2003 amendment of the Citizenship Act, 1955. Its purpose is to document all legal citizens of India so that illegal immigrants can be identified and deported. It has been implemented in Assam since 2013-2014. The APW's latest complaint accuses former Coordinator Prateek Hajela of "gross anomaly" in the process of aggregating the register. "It is suspected that there have been manipulations in the family tree verification," APW has alleged.