Assam Public Works (APW) filed a police complaint against former NRC State Co-ordinator Prateek Hajela.
An FIR has been registered against Prateek Hajela and his close associates for manipulations in the Family Tree Verification during NRC updation.
Regarding the FIR against the former NRC state Co-ordinator, APW President Aabhijeet Sharma on behalf of APW organized a press meet on Wednesday morning. During the meet, President Aabhijeet Sharma infomed –
1. Till date, APW has registered a total of ten FIRs against Prateek Hajela.
2. In the name of Family Tree Verification, names of many foreigners have been instigated into the NRC list.
3. APW President Aabhijeet Sharma said that Hajela manipulated the verification process during the NRC updating process.
4. Hajela did this in collaboration with some officers of migrant backgrounds, data entry operators, few minority leaders and some ‘anti-national elements’.
5. A total of 40 percent of suspicious people with foreign nationals have been included into the NRC.
Referring to an affidavit filed by Prateek Hajela’s successor Hitesh Dev in the Supreme court, the APW President said that the NRC list had many anomalies and names of many illegal and suspicious persons.
The draft NRC published in August 2019 had left out the names of 19.06 lakhs people out of some 3.3 crore applicants.
There must be a detailed investigation on Prateek Hajela, officers with migrant backgrounds, data entry operators and the minority leaders.
“The family tree verification would have been fool-proof had it been done properly. Under such verification, all the offspring of a legacy person (a pre-1971 resident with whom the citizenship link is sought to be established) were asked to submit their family details that were analysed digitally.” Aabhijeet Sharma stated.
“The family tree verification did not work properly as most NRC officials working in immigrant-dominated areas belonged to the immigrant community whose citizenship was never verified.” the APW President further said.
The APW President further said that re-verification must be done in districts like –
Nagaon, Dhubri, Barpeta, Bongaigaon, Goalpara, Kokrajhar, Kamrup Metro, Kamrup Rural, Darang, Sonitpur, Lakhimpur, Morigaon, Karimganj, Hailakandi and Silchar.
APW President Aabhijeet Sharma further alleged that money was taken from people of Dubai for inclusion of their names in the NRC list.
When asked about the involvement of Assam government in the NRC scam, the President stated –
“State government has nothing to do with the NRC updation as on July 13, 2017, Supreme court ordered Assam government and Central government to stay away from the NRC process. Hajela was given the sole responsibility to oversee the process.
On August, 2017 we protested against Hajela for his work on the NRC process.
Later the Supreme court threatened APW and were asked to keep mum. Any protest against the NRC process will be termed as an act against the Indian law.”
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