New Delhi: After six years of intense exercise, the final Assam NRC list was released on August 31, 2019, excluding 19,06,067 persons from the list.
The state government had said that it will establish 400 Foreigners' Tribunals (FTs) in the state to deal with the cases of people, who have been excluded from the final.
But, according to a fact-finding team of an NGO "United Against Hate", which visited the state last week, there are lots of anomalies and biases involved in the way these FTs are addressing these cases.
According to Nadeem Khan, member of United Against Hate, "Advocates or judges heading these FTs are not acting independently but acting as political agents of the ruling party in Assam. Those whose list has more foreigners get an extension of the job after two years and those who don't are sidelined."
According to rules, the head of the FTs or members are appointed on a contractual basis of two years. Their job renewal is in the hands of the executive.
"This becomes apparent with the removal of 19 FT heads last year. They were removed because they were performing according to the mandate and judging cases after due diligence," he added.
Sanjay Hegde, senior advocate at Supreme Court said, "I don't think that anybody expects 100 or 200 FTs to complete the task of re-inclusion of more than 19 lakh people in the NRC."
Ravi Nair, executive director, South Asia Human Rights Document Centre said, "United Nations Human Rights Committee has judicial experts and very soon we will see a very strong indictment of India's record relating to the NRC."
"It is not just Assam, there is a devious purpose in this whole exercise and they (Centre) are now planning to do this across the country," he added.
According to the report compiled by the NGO, both in exclusion from NRC and in categorising as Doubtful Voter, married women are the worst sufferers.
Imran Began, daughter of sitting Congress MLA Ilias Ali has been excluded from NRC list but rest of her family have been included in the list.
Imran Ali married to Mozammil Hoque of Kharupetia in the district and the couple lives in front of father's house, tells fact-finding team that women in the state get married in young age and female child in the family is generally excluded in property share makes them difficult to prove family legacy, since surname changes after the marriage.
