Legal initiative launched for a comprehensive review of Assam NRC

Some may say it’s hoping against hope, but the people of Assam are expecting something positive, as the Supreme Court of India had recently agreed to hear a petition asking for a comprehensive and time-bound re-verification of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) updated in Assam during 2014–2019.

The apex court on 22 August 2025 responded positively to the plea forwarded by a retired IAS officer (both in his personal capacity and as representative of a large number of indigenous people in Assam) for an error-free NRC. Admitting the writ petition from Hitesh Dev Sarma, who happened to be a former State coordinating officer to the NRC Assam updating process, the SC issued notices to the Union government in New Delhi, the Assam government in Dispur, the current State NRC coordinator, and the Registrar General of India (RGI), seeking their responses. For records, the NRC’s complete draft was published on 30 July 2018 and its supplementary list was released on the midnight of 31 August 2019 (leaving 19 lakh individuals out of 3.30 crore participants undocumented), but that is yet to be notified by the RGI.

The 1951 NRC for Assam was updated following the direction of the SC with an aim to detect all illegal citizens with the cut-off date of 25 March 1971 (which was accepted in the memorandum of settlement—popularly floated as the Assam Accord—signed in 1985 to culminate the six-year-long agitation to detect and deport millions of unrecognised migrants from Bangladesh). Assam Public Works chief Aabhijeet Sharma pursued the NRC updation with a PIL in the top court, which later reportedly ‘monitored’ the exercise engaging over 50,000 government employees and nearly 6,000 part-time workers (for which New Delhi spent Rs 1,600 crores). Prateek Hajela, a 1995 batch IAS officer of the Assam-Meghalaya cadre, was appointed as the coordinator in 2019 to supervise the massive exercise. Soon after the final NRC draft was released, Hajela, a native of Madhya Pradesh, was relocated to his home state fearing for his security in Assam. Later, the State government allowed him to go with voluntary retirement benefits.

Meanwhile, the NRC updating process became mired in corruption and malpractices, which was detected by none other than the highest national audit body of India. As per the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report (year ending 31 March 2020), there had been financial irregularities to the tune of Rs 260 crores during the NRC updating process. The CAG even recommended penal actions against Hajela along with Wipro Limited (which functioned as the system integrator in the process). Prior to the CAG report, Hajela’s immediate successor Devsarma raised the issue of corruption as well as mishandling of the NRC updating process to help a large number of illegally migrated individuals include their names in the list. He even framed serious allegations that Hajela used tampered software in the process (preventing any quality checking) to entertain those infiltrators in the pursuit of greed for foreign money.

Thousands of illegal foreigners’ names were included in the NRC draft as ‘originally inhabitants’ of Assam. At the same time, quality checks of those entries were restricted even for senior officers in Guwahati. An important verification mechanism titled ‘Family Tree Matching’ was compromised by Hajela and his associates. Moreover, Hajela implemented a separate verification process called DMIT (district magistrate investigation team) without the knowledge (and consent) of the SC. It was done simply to include the names of persons without valid documents, alleged Devsarma while speaking to this writer, adding that a huge volume of funds might have come from Arabian countries to enrol the migrated Bangladeshi Muslim settlers’ names in the NRC.

“So it’s not a mere financial scam involving a few hundred crores, but a serious threat with implications on our national security. A probe by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) can only find out how much money was flown from the foreign countries to destabilize Assam and northeast India,” said Devsarma, adding that as per the procedure, Hajela should have been asked to appear before the Public Accounts Committee, but the government allowed him to go almost free. Devsarma, who served as the executive director of NRC Assam (2014–2017) and later as State NRC coordinator (2019–2022) till his retirement, also emphasised the need for a probe by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to deal with the money laundering issue. Having himself lodged two police complaints against Hajela along with APW president Sharma and influential filmmaker Luit Kr Barman, Devsarma lamented that none have been registered to date by the State police authority. Only one case, lately lodged by Gitika Bhattacharya against Hajela, was recently registered and that too only following a court directive.

Lately, Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma also commented that the NRC list was faulty and fraud was committed on the Asomiya people. The outspoken saffron leader stated that Hajela prepared a wrong NRC for Assam. He went ahead by saying that some motivated elements came to Assam from outside to manipulate the NRC with foreign infiltrators’ names. But the government has realised it and adopted correction measures. After all, a flawed NRC cannot be accepted as it would jeopardise national security, asserted Sarma, adding that the indigenous people of Assam deserve a correct and error-free NRC. Patriotic People’s Front Assam (PPFA), a forum of nationalist citizens in eastern India, continues demanding an authentic NRC for Assam.

The PPFA also demanded a fair probe into the findings of the CAG regarding corruption and deprivation of salaries meant for 6,000 temporary workers. Employed as data entry operators (DEOs), those workers got only Rs 5,500 to 9,100 per month per person (which is below the country’s basic minimum wage), whereas the Wipro company received an average of Rs 14,500 per month per DEO. The total volume of siphoned money (even after deducting the reasonable profit margin) is estimated to be over Rs 100 crores, which still remain in the pockets of Wipro, its sub-contractor Integrated System & Services, or somebody else. The forum asserted that the deprived DEOs must get their dues irrespective of the fate of Assam NRC (whether it is reviewed or rejected).

A number of civil society groups, however, demanded finalisation of the Assam NRC with no verification, as the SC upheld the constitutional validity of Clause 6A of the Citizenship Act, 1955 (which endorsed the cut-off date for granting Indian citizenship in Assam as 25 March 1971). They argued that the NRC Assam was updated with the concerned base year, and following the court verdict no point remained for delaying its implementation. But conscious citizens vigorously questioned their motive, asserting that if the NRC is not re-verified, millions of illegal migrants (read East Pakistani/Bangladeshi nationals) would get enrolled in the final list. Leaving aside a few exceptions, Assam media too remained shy of reporting and discussing the financial malpractices taking place in the NRC updating process.

In fact, the majority of local media persons tried their best to spread misinformation (reasons best known to them only), where some Guwahati-based television journalists bent upon establishing that the NRC’s present draft was the most sought-after document for the indigenous people of Assam. They even shamelessly lobbied for accepting it with no verification. At least one TV talk-show host was named and shamed on social media for weeks, but he did not respond to the allegation (not done till today). The outspoken scribe even published a book praising Hajela’s work as unparalleled, with an inherent push for national recognition of the technocrat-turned-bureaucrat. So it’s assumed that a genuine probe would unearth all misdeeds and identify guilty individuals who wanted to cheat the nation for their selfish gains during the much-hyped NRC updating exercise in Assam.

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