SC orders to secure NRC data on lines of Aadhaar

The Supreme Court on Tuesday directed that data collected for publishing in the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam shall be kept as secure as the Aadhaar data.

Spelling out directions to the State Coordinator, NRC, Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi said" "With regard to maintenance of security of the NRC data, we direct that an appropriate regime be enacted on lines similar to the security regime provided for Aadhaar data. Only thereafter, the list of inclusions and exclusions shall be made available to the state government, central government and Registrar General of India."

The court said that there will be no re-verification of the data under NRC and at no point in time the NRC exercise will be reopened. The court also observed that only hard copies of exclusion and inclusion should be provided at district offices.

"The entire NRC exercise having been performed on the aforesaid basis, the same cannot be now ordered to be reopened by initiation of a fresh exercise on certain other parameters that have been suggested," said the court.

The court judgement said that under Section 6A (2) of the Act, all persons of Indian origin who had come to Assam before January 1, 1966, from the specified territory (defined as territories included in Bangladesh) immediately before the commencement of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 1985, "including such persons whose names were included in the electoral rolls for purposes of the general election to the House of the People held in 1967, and who have been ordinarily resident in Assam since the dates of their entry into Assam are deemed to be citizens of India as on and from 1st day of January, 1966," said the court's order.

The court also pointed out that those born after December 3, 2004 won't be included in NRC if any of the parents is a doubtful voter or declared foreigner by a tribunal or is contesting the case. The orders under illegal migrants (after the order of the tribunal) shall be challenged before the Guwahati High Court. All NRC exclusion should be published only online on August 31. IANS