Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Wednesday asserted that the NRC will be introduced throughout India and all illegal immigrants will be thrown out of the country through legal means. He also said that people of the country have given its stamp of approval for the nationwide-implementation of the National Register of Citizens through the verdict of the 2019 elections.
Why does Amit Shah want it implemented throughout the country?
"We had promised to the people of the country in our election manifesto that not only in Assam but we will bring NRC all over the country and make a register of the country's people, and for others (illegal immigrants) action would be taken as per law," he said at an event of Hindi daily Hindustan here.
The home minister said that the full abbreviation of the NRC is National Register of Citizens, not the National Register of Assam. "So this should be implemented throughout the country and I believe that there should be a list of people of the country. "I believe that the people in 2019 have given their views on this because I myself had raised this issue in every rally without fail that we are going to introduce the NRC and those out of the list would be sent out of the country as per law," he said.
Shah also said that those left out of the NRC in Assam have been given a chance to present their case before foreigners' tribunals and the Assam government has also made arrangements for providing lawyers to those who cannot afford their fee to put forth their case.
"But I firmly believe that there is not a single country where anyone can just go and settle. I am asking you, can you go and settle in America? No, you cannot settle. Then how can someone else can settle in India? It is very simple to understand," he said. The home minister wondered where politics comes in this.
"You go try to settle in England, the Netherlands, Russia no one would allow you. Then how come anyone comes and settle down in India. Countries do not function like this. This is the need of the hour that people of the country get a national register," Shah added.
What is NRC in Assam?
The NRC in Assam is basically a list of Indian citizens living in the state. The citizens’ register sets out to identify foreign nationals in the state that borders Bangladesh. The process to update the register began following a Supreme Court order in 2013, with the state’s nearly 33 million people having to prove that they were Indian nationals prior to March 24, 1971. The updated final NRC was released on August 31, with over 1.9 million applicants failing to make it to the list.
The Politics over NRC
The BJP has long promised that it will deport all illegally resident Bangladeshis from Assam and the rest of India, a view that it has articulated time and again over the years.
The party has simultaneously promised that all non-Muslims, whose names don’t figure in the NRC, will be given citizenship rights by amending the law. Other than this, there is no clarity on what the government plans to do with the lakhs of people likely to be rendered stateless after the NRC exercise is completed. Though these persons would have access to foreigners’ tribunals and the courts of the country, the Centre and the Supreme Court should have had a plan in place about how they will deal with the impending humanitarian crisis in Assam. Many of the affected are abjectly poor people, with little or no understanding of how the NRC process works, and entered this country in the hope of a better future for themselves and their children. It is the duty of the Government of India and the Supreme Court to ensure that these individuals are treated with dignity.
(Inputs from Agencies)
