Nearly three months after the final National Register of Citizens was published, on 31 August, nineteen lakh residents of Assam who were left off the list are yet to receive rejection notices explaining the grounds of exclusion. These residents are granted a 120-day period to appeal before the Foreigners Tribunals. Since the appeal lies against the reasons for rejection, this period cannot begin until the notices are issued. In fact, the Registrar General of India is yet to even officially publish the NRC in the Gazette of India, in the absence of which the document has no legal sanction.
Meanwhile, on 26 November, the Supreme Court case monitoring the NRC project was listed for hearing for the first time before the recently appointed chief justice of India, Sharad Arvind Bobde, who presided over the case with the judges Sanjiv Khanna and Surya Kant. A batch of NRC-related petitions that had been clubbed together were listed for hearing. Among these is an application filed by the Brahmaputra Civil Society and the Justice Forum Assam—both Assam-based organisations that have been involved in field research, advocacy and legal interventions on the NRC. The groups sought directions from the court to frame a standard operating procedure applicable to Foreigners Tribunals while adjudicating the NRC appeals. Ultimately, the case was not taken up on the day, and is yet to be listed for a new date.
The day before it was listed for hearing, Arshu John, an assistant editor at The Caravan, spoke to Abdul Batin Khandekar, the working president of the Brahmaputra Civil Society, about the current issues concerning the NRC that have been left unresolved after its publication. This included the status of doubtful voters, or D-voters, who were suspected of residing in Assam illegally, and consequently left out of the NRC. Individuals are designated as D-voters by the Election Commission and Border Police officials, and they have to prove their citizenship before the Foreigners Tribunals. Among other things, Khandekar discussed four key issues that he believed needed to be resolved before the appeals process against the NRC exclusions could begin.
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