The Supreme Court on Tuesday took strong exception to Assam’s National Register of Citizens (NRC) coordinator Prateek Hajela talking to media often.
In a strong message to the Assam NRC coordinator, the apex court told Hajela to ensure an error-free final NRC instead.
The Supreme Court bench of Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman also ‘warned’ Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India (RGCC), Sailesh to be ‘cautious in future’ while talking to media.
The apex court was particularly critical of Hajela’s remark in the media that ‘any valid document would be accepted as proof of citizenship during the hearing on complaints and objections by those left out in the final draft of NRC’.
The Supreme Court also told Hajela that he was an officer of the court first and should not have spoken to the media about the NRC.
The court reminded Sailesh that on an earlier occasion, too, he was warned by the court on his actions about the preparation of the NRC.
Justice Gogoi also read out the order passed by the court in its last hearing on July 31.
In its last order, the court had said: “… what has been published is only the Complete Draft NRC which naturally being a draft cannot be the basis of any action by any authority.”
The court had also recorded the statement of Attorney General KK Venugopal that the Central Government was in the process of ‘preparing modalities in the form of standard operating procedures’ to deal with claims and objections through a fair process.