Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind president Maulana Syed Arshad Madani has said the court’s rejection of further round of verification is a major victory of the Jamiat lawyers as the communal forces have been attempting to create fear psychosis among Indian citizens
Caravan News
NEW DELHI — As the Center and Assam government suffered a great set back with the rejection of the further round of verification of NRC draft by the Supreme Court, Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind (Arshad Madani) and All Assam Minority Students Unions (AAMSU) on Wednesday termed the apex court’s decision as a major success of the people of Assam. They said the ruling has provided much-needed relief to them from further harassment on the citizenship issue.
Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind president Maulana Syed Arshad Madani said the court’s rejection of further round of verification is a major victory of the Jamiat lawyers as the communal forces have been attempting to create fear psychosis among Indian citizens, particularly Muslims, by raising trivial issues and by throwing a spanner in the updating process of the NRC.
Arshad Madani alleged that the re-verification plea was a well-thought conspiracy to harass the people once again whose names were included in the NRC draft and to prolong the ongoing update process for political purpose.
Though the top court on Tuesday extended the deadline for publication of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) by a month to August 31 as sought by the Center, but it rejected the plea for a 20% sample re-verification of names included in the draft in the districts bordering Bangladesh and a 10% sample re-verification in the remaining districts of the State.
In two separate but identical applications, the Centre and Assam governments had contended that besides the inclusion of the names of several illegal migrants, those of several genuine citizens had been deleted which were heard by the court. The court judgment is being seen as a setback to the BJP governments at the Centre and in Assam which wanted to stretch the process in keeping mind the coming assembly election in Assam.
When these petitions were filed on July 18 by the Center and Assam government, Jamiat counsels Kapil Sibal, and Salman Khurshid had strongly opposed them arguing that the Center and Assam government have been showing undue concerns for those whose names have been already included in the draft NRC but they haven’t shown any concern for those who have been running from pillar to post to get their names included in the NRC.
It is to mention that the court had earlier fixed July 31 as the date for finalization of the NRC, whose draft publication in July last year resulted in the elimination of over 40 lakh names from the citizenship register. The apex court fixed August 8 date for hearing of grievances of those descendants/claimants whose parent had been declared a foreign national by the tribunal, though the spouse’s name is included in the draft NRC.
Attorney-General K.K. Venugopal and Solicitor-General Tushar Mehta had made a plea and argued n the court that there should a sample re-verification of the names included in the draft NRC, particularly those from the border region, as thousands of illegal migrants had managed to get their names included with the active collusion of local officials through bribes, which was rejected by the bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice R.F. Nariman during a special hearing on Tuesday
Countering the Solicitor-General Tushar Mehta’s argument, Jamiat and AAMSU counsel Salman Khurshid said if the Court accepts this prayer then the NRC exercise will get further delayed.
When the Attorney-General pressed for re-verification of 20 per cent of the names, the Chief Justice pointed out that on August 28, 2018, the court had suggested 10 per cent re-verification of the names, but neither the Centre nor the Assam government had bothered to undertake any exercise for the past one year. But now, when the NRC finalisation was nearing the deadline, the government has come out with the applications for re-verification.
The court, however, agreed to extend the deadline for finalisation of the NRC to August 31 as requested by Prateek Hajela, special coordinator for NRC, in view of the recent flood situation which had affected the data updates.
Jamiat chief Arshad Madani termed the court ruling as a major success saying Jamiat has been fighting the case for all citizens irrespective of their religious affiliation. Slamming the communal forces, Maulana Madani said attempts are being made to exclude the names of those people who have been living for centuries on one pretext or the other.
Jamiat has a clear a stand on this issue that no genuine citizen should be left out of the NRC while it also strongly opposes the inclusion of any foreigner in the NRC, Maulana said.
