The Supreme Court on Tuesday extended the deadline to publish the final Assam Citizens list by a month from July 31 to August 31.
The court, however, declined the pleas of the central government and the Assam government for reverification of 20% names in border districts and 10% names in other districts.
The names of 40 lakh of the 3.23 crore applicants had been excluded from the complete draft National Register of Citizens (NRC) that was released last year. The NRC, monitored by the Supreme Court, is being updated in Assam with the intention of weeding out illegal immigrants.
The Centre had last week asked the top court to extend the July 31 deadline for the Assam citizens list, insisting that it needed to tweak the processes for inclusion of names in the list.
The Centre said lakhs of illegal immigrants had crept and many citizens left out in the list that had been prepared so far. The illegal immigrants needed to be purged from the list, Tushar Mehra, the central government’s second most senior law officer had said in the top court.
“India cannot be the world’s refugee capital of the world,” Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said.
Mehta had suggested that a massive re-verification exercise needed to be carried out of 20% districts bordering Bangladesh, India’s neighbour that is the source of the largest proportion of illegal immigrants to the country. The Centre also sought a 10% re-verification in other districts.
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