Assam NRC official files police case against predecessor Hajela, alleges treason
According to Hitesh Dev Sarma, Prateek 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.
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.
“Despite mandate of Supreme Court for an error free NRC, Prateek Hajela may have intentionally avoided mandatory quality checks 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,” the complaint by Sarma, which HT has seen. 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”.
Sarma has lodged a case against Hajela and some other officers with the CID, Assam Police on Thursday under Sections 120B, 166A, 167, 181, 218, 420 and 466 of the Indian Penal Code. HT reached out to Hajela for a response but he said “I do not wish to comment.”
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. The final NRC has been rejected as incorrect by the state’s BJP-led government stating that it had many anomalies. When questioned about the complaint, SP (CID) Pranab Jyoti Goswami refused to divulge the details of the complaint, saying that it is an internal issue of the department. “The complaint against Hajela filed by the NRC state coordinator just buttresses the complaints we have been making... Hopefully, the state police will get serious now,” said Abhijeet Sharma of Assam Public Works (APW).
