The Centre has extended the deadline by six months for completion of the on-going process of updating the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam till June 30, 2019.
In a notification, the Registrar General of India (RGI) said the decision had been taken as the exercise to enumerate citizens in the NRC, a list of Assam’s residents, could not be completed within the specified date of December 31, 2018, according to a report published in the Gplus.
“The central government has considered it necessary and expedient in the public interest to complete the said enumeration in connection with the updation of the National Register of Citizens, 1951, by the 30th day of June 2019,” the notification, issued by Registrar General of India, Sailesh, said.
The government had issued the first notification on December 6, 2013 fixing a deadline of three years for completion of the entire NRC updating process. However, since then, five extensions were given by the Central government in regular intervals as the exercise cou;d not be completed as per deadline.
The final draft NRC was published on July 30 and that included names of 2.9 crore applicants out of the total 3.29 crore applications. There has been a huge controversy over the exclusion of 40 lakh people from the draft NRC.
The current process of claims and objections to the draft NRC will come to an end on December 31 and after that the final updated is expected to be published.