NRC: ‘D’ (Doubtful) Voters Tag Against Missing Names

Source: sentinelassam.com

GUWAHATI: Post-publication of final NRC (National Register of Citizens) on August 31, the ‘D’ (Doubtful) voters tag in photo electoral rolls will be applied to all those people who are found ineligible for inclusion in the NRC, a source in the Assam Home and Political department said.

The ‘D’ voters do not have the right to cast votes during elections. This tag was introduced by the Election Commission of India in 1997, and at that time there were 2,20,209 such ‘D’ voters. Interestingly, Assam is the only State in India that has the ‘D’ tag provision. Now, there are about 1.13 lakh ‘D’ voters in Assam.

The State Government will refer the cases of individuals whose names will not be enrolled in the final NRC, to the Foreigners’ Tribunals (FTs). Individuals can themselves approach FTs directly. Once such cases will go to FTs, those individuals will be tagged as ‘D’ voters. The Gauhati High Court has also given its directive in this regard. However, if the FT declares a person as “Indian’, then the ‘D’ tag will be removed against his/her name in the photo electoral roll. But if the FT declares the person as a ‘Foreigner’, then the very name of the person will be removed from the photo electoral roll.

The mammoth exercise of NRC update was taken up in Assam as per order of the Supreme Court of India, in 2013. Since then, the apex court has been closely monitoring the entire process. The process of NRC update in Assam differs from the rest of the country and is governed by Rule 4A and the corresponding Schedule of the Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003. These rules have been framed as per the cut-off date of March 24 (midnight), 1971, as agreed upon in the Assam Accord.

The process of receipt of NRC application forms started during the end of May 2015, and ended on Aug 31, 2015. A total of 3,29,91,384 people applied through 68,31,330 applications.

On completion of verification of all applicants, the complete Draft NRC was published on July 30, 2018. It consisted names of all those persons who have been found eligible. Accordingly, 2,89,83,677 persons have been found eligible for inclusion in the Complete Draft NRC.

But an Additional NRC Draft (Exclusion) list was also published on June 26, 2019.  This list consisted names of 1,02,462 persons. Sources said the Additional Draft Exclusion List contained the names of those persons who were included in the complete draft NRC published on July last year, but subsequently found ineligible for inclusion in the final NRC for various reasons. These were given scope to assert their claims to be included in the final NRC.