Something interesting is waiting to happen in Assam, as the Supreme Court of India recently agreed to hear a petition asking for a comprehensive and time-bound re-verification of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) updated in Assam during 2014-2019. The apex court on 22 August 2025 responded positively to the plea forwarded by a retired IAS officer (with a satisfactory financial support from common people) for an error-free NRC. Admitting the writ petition from Hitesh Devsarma, who happened to be a former State coordinator to NRC Assam updating process, the SC issued notices to the Union government in New Delhi, Assam government in Dispur, current State NRC coordinator and Registrar General of India (RGI) seeking their responses. For records, the NRC’s final draft copy was released on the midnight of 31 August 2019 (leaving 19 lakh individuals out of 3.30 crore participants undocumented), but that is yet to be notified by the RGI.
But the NRC updating process got embraced with corruption & malpractices, which was detected by none other than the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG). As per the CAG report (year ending 31 March 2020), there had been financial irregularities to the tune of Rs 260 crores during the NRC updating process. The highest national audit body even recommended penal actions against Hajela along with Wipro limited (which functioned as the system integrator in the process). Prior to the CAG report, Hajela’s successor Devsarma raised the issue of corruption and mishandling the NRC updating process helping a large number of illegally migrated individuals’ names in the list. He framed serious allegations that Hajela used tampered software in the process to entertain those infiltrators in the pursuit of foreign money.
Hundreds of thousands of illegal foreigners’ names were included in the NRC draft as ‘originally inhabitants’ of Assam. At the same time, quality-checks of those entries were restricted for even the superior officers. An important verification mechanism titled ‘Family Tree Matching’ was compromised by Hajela and his associates. With more to it, Hajela even implemented a different verification process called DMIT (district magistrate investigation team) without the knowledge and consent of the top court. It was simply done to include the names of persons without valid documents, claimed Devsarma, adding that a huge volume of funds might have come from Arabian countries to enrol the recently migrated Muslim settlers from Bangladesh in the NRC.
In recent days, Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma also started commenting that the NRC list was faulty and the fraud was committed on Asomiya people during the process (for which New Delhi spent Rs 1600 crores). The outspoken saffron leader stated that Hajela prepared a wrong NRC for Assam. He went ahead by saying that some motivated elements came to Assam from outside to manipulate the NRC with foreign infiltrators’ names. But the government has realised the matter and adopted correction measures. After all, a flawed NRC cannot be accepted as it would jeopardise national security, asserted Sarma, adding that the indigenous people of Assam deserve a correct and error-free NRC.
In fact, the majority of local media persons tried their best to spread misinformation (reasons best known to them only), where some Guwahati-based television journalists bent upon proving that the NRC final draft as the most sought-after document for the indigenous population. They shamelessly lobbied for accepting it with no verification. At least one TV talk-show host was named and shamed on social media, but he did not respond to the allegation (not done till date). The outspoken scribe even published a book praising Hajela’s work as unparalleled with a push for national recognition to the technocrat turned bureaucrat. Hence it’s assumed that a genuine probe would unearth all guilty individuals who wanted to cheat the nation for their selfish gains.
Waiting for a complete revision of Assam NRC
