Assam NRC coordinator files case against predecessor, alleges treason

SILCHAR/GUWAHATI: Assam state coordinator of NRC Hitesh Dev Sarma has lodged a police case against his predecessor Prateek Hajela alleging treason for intentionally allowing irregularities in preparing the list which resulted in illegal migrants registering their names as Indians.

According to Sarma, Hajela knowingly disobeyed law, wilfully avoided proper quality checks in the process of updating the NRC and allowed declared foreigners, doubtful voters and their descendants to enlist their names.

Terming this as an anti-national activity, which could threaten India’s security, Sarma lodged a case against Hajela and some other officers with the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Assam Police on Thursday under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 120B (Criminal conspiracy), 166A (Being a public servant, knowingly disobeys any direction of the law), 167 (Public servant framing an incorrect document with intent to cause injury), 181 (False statement on oath or affirmation to public servant or person authorised to administer an oath or affirmation), 218 (Public servant framing incorrect record or writing with intent to save person from punishment or property from forfeiture), 420 (Cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) and 466 (Forgery of record of court or of public register).

“Despite mandate of Supreme Court for an error free NRC, Prateek Hajela may have intentionally avoided mandatory quality check by ordering use of a software which prevented quality check and facilitated entry of names of ineligible persons into NRC, which can be seen as an anti-national act affecting the national security,” said the complaint by Sarma, which HT has seen.

HT reached out to Hajela for a response but he said, “I do not wish to comment.”

The final list of updated NRC for Assam, which aimed to weed out illegal immigrants in the state, was released in August, 2019 and had excluded 1.9 million applicants based on doubts about their citizenship.

Within weeks of the list getting released, Hajela, an IAS officer who was the state NRC coordinator at that time and had overseen the entire exercise, was transferred to his parent state Madhya Pradesh following instructions of the Supreme Court, which was monitoring the NRC process.

Hajela left Assam in November, 2019 and the Assam government appointed Hitesh Dev Sarma, another IAS officer, as the new state coordinator for NRC.

The final NRC has been rejected as incorrect by the state’s Bharatiya Janata Party-led government saying that it had many anomalies and left out eligible persons and included illegal immigrants. The Assam government has since approached the Supreme Court seeking a review of the entire exercise.

Several local groups and organisations in Assam have also rejected the list and have approached the Supreme Court seeking a review. All those petitions are pending before the apex court.

Meanwhile, the NRC list is yet to be notified by the Registrar General of India, leading to a long wait by those left out of the list to file appeals before the foreigners’ tribunals seeking inclusion as citizens.

In his complaint, Sarma cited example of a sample check done at three NRC centres in Barpeta and Darrang districts in which verification of legacy data codes (LDCs) of 2,346 persons revealed that names of 975 of them had been “erroneously entered” into NRC list by matching their family tree (FT).

“The uploading of wrong results in such a large number cannot be seen as normal error, but an intentional act threatening national security,” the complaint said, alleging that Hajela used software which allowed verifying officer and data entry operators “to freely upload wrong results with ulterior motive”.

Sarma cited another example from Kamrup district’s Chamaria circle in which 64,247 of the total 143,522 NRC applicants were included in the list under the category of Original Inhabitants (OI).

Re-verification of the data of 30,791 of the 64,247 persons done days prior to the release of NRC list in August, 2019 following a complaint by the deputy commissioner about possible irregularities revealed that 7446 of them were ineligible to be categorised as OI and some of them had been declared as foreigners, were descendants of foreigners or were termed as doubtful voters by the Election Commission.

Sarma alleged that Hajela intentionally avoided re-verification of all the 64,247 persons despite a complaint and his act should be treated as “treason for doing an activity which is likely to threaten national security”.

The complaint alleged that Hajela intentionally allowed using software, which do not keep records, and this has been confirmed by the software developer company, Bohniman Systems.

“The software was so prepared to avoid any quality checks giving the verifying officers of doubtful integrity a free hand to upload wrong results to fulfil their vested interest,” Sarma added.

When asked, superintendent of police (CID) Pranab Jyoti Goswami refused to divulge details of the complaint or action taken on it saying that it is an internal issue of the department.

This is not the first time that cases against Hajela have been filed in the CID. After the publication of the NRC list, over a dozen cases alleging irregularities by Hajela were filed by Assam Public Works (APW), a local NGO whose petition in the Supreme Court in 2009 had set the ball rolling for updating the NRC for Assam.

“The complaint against Hajela filed by the NRC state coordinator just buttresses the allegations and complaints we have been making against the former NRC coordinator over the years. Hopefully, the state police will get serious now and conduct detailed investigations into the allegations made by us and the one by Sarma now,” said Abhijeet Sharma of APW.

State NRC coordinator Sarma has also been in headlines over his recent directives to foreigners’ tribunals in the state asking them not to rely on the NRC list while deciding cases regarding citizenship.

Following this, a foreigners’ tribunal member, who didn’t want to disclose his name to the media, wrote a letter to Sarma asking him not to interfere in the functioning of the quasi-judicial bodies.

Amid this controversy, several organisations from Barak Valley in Assam appealed to Gauhati high court judge, justice Nongmeikapam Kotiswar Singh on May 18 to intervene and instruct Sarma to intervene in the functioning of the foreigners’ tribunals.