The Supreme Court on Monday sought responses from the Centre and the Registrar General of Citizen Registration on two petitions seeking national identity cards for those whose names have been recorded in the Assam NRC.
The identical pleas have been filed by the All Assam Minority Students Union (Aamsu) and the Jamiat Ulama-I-Hind.
A bench of Justices P.S. Narasimha and A.S. Chandurkar issued notices to the respondent authorities after briefly hearing senior advocates Kapil Sibal and Indira Jaising, appearing for the two organisations, respectively.
Aamsu and Jamiat have filed the writ petitions under Article 32 of the Constitution through advocate-on-record Fuzail Ahmad Ayyubi, seeking directions to the Centre and the Registrar General of Citizen Registration to complete the NRC process in Assam by taking the statutory steps of issuing identity cards that remain pending since the publication of the final NRC on August 31, 2019.
The NRC, Assam, "a scientific, data-driven and evidence-based exercise", was conducted under the supervision of the Supreme Court from 2013 to 2019.
It was submitted by the two senior counsels that the final NRC, published jointly by the registrar-general and the state coordinator, is the result of years of meticulous verification, cross-checking of legacy data and scrutiny of over 3.3 crore applications. It was intended to bring a conclusive and lawful resolution to the decades-old question of citizenship in Assam, the petitioners said.
Justice Narasimha initially expressed the view that the matter could be effectively dealt with by Gauhati High Court, but the two senior advocates submitted that since the issue has been closely monitored by the Supreme Court for over five years, the matter should be examined by the apex court.