Washington, November 16
A federal US commission on international religious freedom has alleged that National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam is a tool to “target religious minorities and to render Muslims stateless”.
Observing that the final NRC list, which validates bona fide Indian citizens of Assam, has excluded 19 lakh residents, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) on Friday said a number of domestic and international organisations have expressed concern that the NRC is a “targeted mechanism to disenfranchise Assam’s Bengali Muslim community, implicitly establishing a religious requirement for citizenship and potentially rendering large numbers of Muslims stateless.”
The NRC is a register containing names of all genuine Indian citizens. The process to update the register in Assam began following a Supreme Court order in 2013, with the state’s nearly 3.3 crore people having to prove that they were Indian nationals prior to March 24, 1971.
The updated final NRC was released on August 31, with over 19 lakh applicants failing to make it to the list.
The USCIRF in “Issue Brief: India” released on Friday said the NRC “as a tool to target religious minorities and, in particular, to render Indian Muslims stateless has become one more example of the downward trend in religious freedom conditions within India.”
Updating of NRC is a statutory, transparent, legal process mandated by the Supreme Court of India. This is not an executive-driven process, the Ministry of External Affairs has said in response to questions on the NRC.
“The process is being monitored by the Supreme Court directly and the government is acting in accordance with the directives issued by the court. The apex court of the land has itself set the deadlines for all steps that have been taken so far,” it said in a detailed statement in September.
The statement also said the NRC is a fair process based on scientific methods. — PTI
from The Tribune https://ift.tt/2po2nU0
via Today’s News Headlines
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