Assam state govt issues SOP to link Aadhar card with NRC application number

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Dec 11 said that the state government would begin verification of applicants for Aadhaar cards in Assam and reject applicants whose families had not applied to be a part of the National Register of Citizens (NRC).

The decision to link Aadhaar cards with NRC applications was announced by Sarma in September this year. He had stated that the state government decided to issue a standard operating protocol for the future issuance of Aadhaar cards, which will make it mandatory for one to furnish their NRC application number, which had been provided to them while applying in 2015.

Following a meeting on Dec 11, he said that the Cabinet had approved the proposal for the implementation of an SOP to this end. He said that the General Administration Department of the state government would be the nodal agency for its implementation, which would be overseen by Additional District Commissioners at the district level and by Circle Officers at the revenue circle level.

“Scores of infiltrators have been nabbed by Assam Police, Tripura Police, and BSF in the last two months. That is why infiltration from Bangladesh is a concern for us. We need to strengthen our system, so we decided to toughen the Aadhaar card mechanism,” Sarma said.

He said that after an application is made, the UIDAI will send it to the state government for verification, following which the Circle Officer concerned would check if the applicant or their family had applied for inclusion in the NRC.

“If it is found that there was an application for NRC, the circle officer will go for field-level verification as per Supreme Court directives. After the officer is fully convinced, the Aadhaar will be approved,” he said.

The process of updating the NRC, which is currently in limbo after the publication of a “final NRC” in 2019, began in 2015. The process had been undertaken to determine whether an applicant had entered the state before March 24, 1971.

Those found to have entered Assam before that date were to be included in the NRC, and be recognized as citizens. Those who were excluded from the NRC were to face a trial in the state’s Foreigner Tribunal system.

The process's applications were carried out between March and August 2015, and 3,30,27,661 people applied. In the final NRC, published in August 2019, 19 lakh of these applicants were excluded.