Guwahati: Upamanyu Hazarika, a senior advocate of the Supreme Court and convener of the Prabajan Virodhi Mancha, a forum against infiltration, has written to the registrar-general of India (RGI), Sailesh and NRC state coordinator Prateek Hajela, claiming largescale discrepancies and infirmities in the NRC update process.

According to him, it resulted in inclusion of a large number of illegal migrants from Bangladesh in the final draft of the NRC which was published on July 30.

"Today, I have made representations to the RGI and the NRC state coordinator highlighting the discrepancies and infirmities, which have been brought to my notice over the last two to three weeks," Hazarika said here on Sunday.

"There are fundamental flaws at the institutional and verification level, resulting in inclusion of a large number of foreigners, including those declared "foreigners" by tribunals. Thousands of such inclusions have taken place in Dhubri district alone," he added.

In his view, the primary reason for such inclusions was reliance on field verification as the ultimate test for inclusion though documents showed otherwise and where there had been largescale subversion.

Hazarika said the discrepancies could not be resolved through claims and objections procedure and would require investigation of the discrepancies and re-verification in districts bordering Bangladesh and the migrant-dominated areas. He said the percentage of exclusion of certain districts such as Dhubri and Karimganj bordering Bangladesh is less than the state average despite these districts recording unusually high population growth because of unabated infiltration from the neighbouring country.

Hazarika expressed surprise at inclusion of persons not having valid documents only on the basis of three neighbours identifying them.

"Field verification reports were not subjected to any quality checks. The surprising fact is that none of these verification reports has been digitised when all other documents have been digitised. Quality of personnel deployed also shows up in the results. Verification of family trees at the circle level was carried out by newly-recruited college and school teachers who, with a few days of training, could not perform adequately resulting in a lot of errors."

Hazarika said personnel involved in the NRC update process were unanimous in their views that there had been huge subversion in the border districts and migrant-dominated areas, adding that a re-verification and re-evaluation in these areas was a prerequisite for an error-free NRC. "It is imperative that an honest assessment and investigation are carried out instead of the usual cover-up because what is at stake is the future of the indigenous people of Assam who are on the verge of becoming minority owing to largescale influx," he said.

Hazarika pointed out that the figure thrown up by the draft NRC was far short of the official estimate of illegal migrant population in the state and even the present 40 lakh figure could decrease considerably when the final NRC would be published.