By Nava Thakuria*
Guwahati: When will Assam National Register of Citizens (NRC) scamsters be punished? Just ahead of the first Parliamentary session, a letter was sent to Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi, who was reinstated to lead the Union Government in New Delhi after General Elections 2024, seeking his intervention in the updation of the NRC in Assam.
The sender, a former State coordinator to NRC (Assam), alleged huge anomalies in the NRC updating process and pointed fingers at his predecessor Prateek Hajela, a retired Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer. Congratulating Modi for his third consecutive triumph, Hitesh Devsarma, also an IAS (retired), conveyed that the people of Assam still hope that PM Modi would take visible actions for the detection and deportation of illegal migrants (read Bangladeshi Muslims).
Devsarma, who retired as a home secretary to the Assam government in 2022, described how badly Assam had been affected by the illegal migration of foreigners, especially from Bangladesh, for the last several decades and he asserted that the problem is yet to be addressed properly by the Union government in New Delhi. He went ahead with saying that currently, the Bangladeshi Muslims have emerged as a major threat to the existence of the indigenous people of Assam. So he found no other option than writing to the PMO directly reposing “immense faith in Modi’s determination, capability and concern for the great nation”.
Mentionable is that an important effort began for the detection of illegal foreigners in Assam in 2014 through the updation of NRC as per the order of the Supreme Court of India. The NRC updation was done under the leadership of Hajela as the State coordinator, whereas Devsarma was also initially involved with the process as the executive director.
“But in early 2016, Hajela started applying his discretionary power (going against the principle), which had the potential to jeopardize the entire purpose of NRC updation. For the difference of opinions, I abandoned the process in February 2017,” said Devsarma in his letter to PMO, adding that the complete draft NRC was published in July 2018 and the supplementary list was released on August 31, 2019. Later Hajela was sent to his home state on deputation even though the final NRC was yet to be published. Then Devsarma was assigned as the NRC state coordinator and he found that no less than Rs 260 crores of mismanagement was done during the process till March 31, 2020. The Comptroller & Auditor General of India (CAG) also reported financial irregularities and fixed responsibility for these anomalies on Hajela. As per the procedure, Hajela had to face the public accounts committee to respond to all charges, but he was allowed to go on voluntary retirement.
Devsarma lodged two FIRs in this regard (another three FIRs were lodged by private parties), but none of those has been registered by the police. Now Devsarma demands a complete re-verification of the NRC (Assam) and legal actions against all those elements, which tried to derail the process for their vested interests. He also demanded that the Enforcement Directorate should inquire into the financial irregularities of the NRC updating process and probable money laundering.
Apprehending a foreign hand that spent a huge amount of money for the inclusion of illegal migrants’ names in the NRC, Devsarma also raised voices for a National Investigation Agency probe to unearth any foreign money which might have been involved in the process.
One can remember that three Guwahati-based television scribes were named on social media as being beneficiaries of the multi-crore NRC scam because they tried to manipulate the local media in favour of Hajela and his associates. They publicly advocated accepting the current NRC draft as the final one without bothering about the consequences to national security and the Assamese people’s future in their own land. In television talk shows, the trio hosted, they praised Hajela almost like a superman. The social media users asked them to clarify their stand on the NRC scam and their involvement with it, but they continue to remain silent over the matter to date. The question that arises here is whether there would be a fair probe into the NRC irregularities and if guilty individuals including those news channel scribes be punished under the law soon.
*Senior journalist
