After the introduction of the recent Citizenship Amendment Act and Home Minister’s speech in parliament, NRC has become a hot topic again. It has sparked a lot of protests all throughout the country spreading from Assam to Mumbai and multiple colleges & universities.
The objective of NRC is to weed out the illegal residents of India who have migrated from neighboring countries illegally. It all started with a huge influx of refugees from Bangladesh(Then East Pakistan) during 1948 to 1971. NRC is the initiative to identify illegal infiltrators and weed them out from India.
NRC Timeline : 1950 to 2019
1950 – After partition, a lot of refugees came to Assam from East Pakistan and for this Immigrants Act(Expulsion from Assam) was passed.
1951 – First Census for independent India took place and first list of NRC was compiled.
1957 – Immigrants Act Repealed
1964/65 – A lot of refugee movement from East Pakistan(now Bangladesh) to India due to internal disturbances in East Pakistan.
1971 – New influx of refugees from East Pakistan and East Pakistan gained its independence and now called ‘Bangladesh”
1979 to 1985 – AASU(All Assam Students’ Union) & AAGSP(All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad) led a 6 year long agitation for detection and deportation of foreigners.
1983 – 3000 people died at a massacre in Central Assam(Nellie). Because of this Illegal Migrants Act was passed
1985 – In the presence of then PM Rajiv Gandhi, Assam Accord was signed by the Centre, State, AASU & AAGSP. One the major clauses in this Accord was that the foreigners who infiltrated to India after 1971 will be expelled.
1997 – Election Commission started adding ‘D’ against name certain voters whose Indian Citizenship was doubtful.
1999 – Centre took a decision to update NRC as per Assam Accord’s cut off date to detect illegal foreigners.
2003 – CAA(Citizenship Amendment Act) was introduced. To the 1955 law it added, anyone born in India between 1950-1987 is an Indian Citizen. Anyone born between 1987 and 2003 is a citizen only if one of the parents is Indian. Anyone born after 2003 is a citizen provided one of the parent is Indian and the other one is not an illegal immigrant
2005 – IMDT Act(Illegal Migrants Act) was struck down by Supreme Court as unconstitutional
2009 – An NGO APW(Assam Public Works) filed a case in Supreme Court for deletion of names of foreigners from Electoral Roll and updation of NRC
2010 – Pilot to update NRC starts in Chaygaon and was successful, while in Barpeta 4 were killed in the violence. So the project was shelved.
2013 – Supreme Court takes up the petition by APW and directs the centre and state to begin the NRC update process. State Coordinator for NRC’s office was set up.
2015 – Process to update NRC begins
2017 – 31st December mid night, draft NRC was published with only names of 1.9 crore out of 3.29 crore applicants.
2018 – On 30th July, another draft NRC was published with 40 Lakh people excluded.
2019 – On June 26th additional exclusion list was released with around 1 Lakh people.
2019 – On 31st August, final draft was published excluding around 19 lakh people out of 3.3 crore applicants.
A recent comment by Assam’s Finance Minister indicates that the NRC will be done again for the state of Assam(when it is done for Pan-India).
As NRC is all around documentation of an individual and his family, it is now high time for us Indians to start organizing our documents properly and share it with family members. Sorted AI takes away your task of organizing documents by leveraging artificial intelligence and with it you can share the entire account with your family members.
Gaurav heads Growth & Marketing at Sorted AI. He is an IIT Kanpur Alumnus. He has more than 5 years of work experience in Entrepreneurship & Investment Banking where he worked with Credit Suisse & Tapp Me. He is an avid Keyboard/Percussion Player & a better discount hunter.
