Guwahati, March 17: Assam Pubic Works (APW), an NGO, will soon move Gauhati High court against the ongoing exercise to prepare a photo voter list in the state as it would make detection of the names of illegal Bangladeshis on the voter’s list more difficult.

Abhijeet Sarma, president of the NGO today said they would move a writ petition in the court next week with a plea that the exercise should be stopped till the National Register of Citizens (NRC), 1951, is updated and the names of illegal Bangladeshis on the voter list deleted. “We have already moved the Supreme Court stating that names of 40 lakh migrants are there in the voter list. If the ongoing exercise by the Election Commission to prepare photo voter list is allowed, it would make the process of deletion of the names of illegal Bangladeshis from our voter list difficult. During updating the NRC, the illegal voters will produce the photo voter list as a document to claim their citizenship,” Sarma told reporters here.

The NGO alleged that there are 40 lakh names of Bangladeshis in the voter’s list of Assam. The APW has moved the Supreme Court seeking its intervention to direct the Assam government to update the NRC, 1951. The organisation demanded this only after the identification of the pre-March 25, 1971 migrants along with their descendents as Indian citizens and identification of the post-March 24, 1971 Bangladeshis as foreigners.

“The exercise to prepare the photo-voter list is unacceptable at a time when a petition against “D voters” is pending in Gauhati High Court and we had submitted two petitions for NRC update in the Supreme Court. We strongly demand that the government should first exclude the names of Bangladeshis from our voter list and then prepare the photo-voter list, voters ID card and Unique Identity card. The ongoing exercise will help the illegal Bangladeshis,” Sarma said.

The NGO said the recent arrest of nine Bangladeshis by Government Railway Police personnel in Guwahati once again proved that illegal infiltration from Bangladesh to Assam continued.

“The state government should make it public how and when the nine Bangladeshis were pushed back. We demand that the government should prepare video footages of the process to their push-back and make it public,” secretary of the NGO, Bitu Talukdar said.