Those excluded from NRC but on rolls can vote in Assam; Cong, AIUDF welcome EC decision

This leaves the document without any officialvalidity.Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora, citing a UnionHome Ministry order, said here on Wednesday that thoseexcluded from the final NRC can vote in the assembly polls iftheir names are there in the published electoral rolls.Lakhs of Indian citizens were excluded in the NRC butnames of many illegal immigrants are there in it.

A day after the Election Commissionmade it clear that those excluded from the NRC will beeligible to vote in the upcoming assembly polls if their namesfigured in the voter list, the ruling BJP on Thursday saidstatus quo about their voting rights has to be maintainedwhile the Congress and the AIUDF welcomed the decision.

The final NRC, a database of Indian citizens living inAssam which was updated under the supervision of the SupremeCourt and published on August 31, 2019, excluded names of over19 lakh of the 3.29 crore applicants.

However, it has not been notified by the Registrar Generalof India yet. This leaves the document without any officialvalidity.

Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora, citing a UnionHome Ministry order, said here on Wednesday that thoseexcluded from the final NRC can vote in the assembly polls iftheir names are there in the published electoral rolls.

''Lakhs of Indian citizens were excluded in the NRC butnames of many illegal immigrants are there in it. The NRCdocument in its present form has not been accepted by theparty and we have asked for a re-verification.

''Till it is done, status quo has to be maintained as thenotification is yet to be issued,'' BJP Assam unit presidentRanjeet Dass told PTI.

National Register of Citizens (NRC) and CitizenshipAmendment Act (CAA) are expected to be major issues in thestate polls.

Many cases had surfaced where a person was a voter inAssam for a long time but did not find place in the NRC list.

State Congress spokesperson Bobbeeta Sharma said thatnames of many genuine Indian citizens were left out of thefinal NRC.

''The EC has taken the right step in allowing them to vote.

Otherwise, their democratic rights would have been infringedupon,'' she said.

The All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF), an alliancepartner of the Congress for the assembly polls due in March-April, also welcomed the EC's decision describing it as ''apositive move''.

AIUDF General Secretary Aminul Islam said, ''We also want apermanent solution to the problems of Doubtful or D-voterswhich exists only in Assam. We requested the ElectionCommission that doubtful voters should be allowed to voteunless they have been declared as foreigners,'' he said.

D-voters are those who could not provide evidence infavour of their Indian nationality.

Altogether 83,008 cases of doubtful voters are pending inthe Foreigners Tribunals in Assam while 86,756 others weredeclared as foreigners in the last five years, the governmentinformed the Lok Sabha in September last year.

Lurinjyoti Gogoi, president of the newly formed AssamJatiya Parishad, however, said that those excluded from theNRC should not be allowed to vote as it will only lead to theadvantage of some political parties.

Gogoi, as general secretary of All Assam Students Union(AASU), was a petitioner in the Supreme Court seeking toremove discrepancies in the NRC.

After publication of the final NRC, almost all thestakeholders and political parties had criticised it as afaulty document, alleging exclusion of indigenous people andinclusion of illegal migrants.