By Bhupen Goswami
Guwahati : In response to the petition filed by the Government of Assam to the Supreme Court of India, the divisional bench headed by Chief Justice of India Justice Ranjan Gogoi extended the last date for filing claims & objections on the inclusion of names in the National Register of Citizen (NRC) to December 31. Earlier, the apex court had fixed December 15 as the last date to submit claims and objections. Stating this in a press release, Legal Advisor to the Chief Minister Santanu Bharali informed that the State Government earlier filed a petition in the apex 
court seeking an extension of time frame for filing claims & objections and the Supreme Court in view of the petition today extended the last date. He also informed that the apex court has also allowed filing objections against wrongful inclusions in the draft NRC at the nodal offices of NRC located at district headquarters. Moreover, the Supreme Court has also postponed the date for commencement of NRC verification process to February 15 from February 1, he said.The hearing was made by the bench comprising of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and S Nariman. To allow people to submit claims to be included in the NRC, the Assam government had urged the Supreme Court to grant at least an extra month beyond the deadline of December 15 . It may be mentioned that the Supreme Court had set December 15 as the deadline for filing claims and objections for the inclusion of names in the final draft of NRC. The State Government also sought directions from the apex court to make available the Application Receipt Number (ARN) in view of the less number of objections filed in the ongoing NRC updation process. On the other hand, two other applications filed by the All Assam Minorities Students’ Union (AAMSU) and Jamiat Ulama-I-Hind will also come up for hearing today. The Government also appealed the apex court to enable the state to re-verify at 20 per cent of those names included in the draft NRC from the districts bordering Bangladesh, as per reports. The Assam Government released the second and final draft of NRC on July 30. 2,89, 83,677 persons were found eligible out of 3,29,91,384 applicants in the final draft of the NRC. Names of 4,007,707 people were not included in the final draft NRC. Of these, 37,59,630 names have been rejected and the remaining 2,48,077 are on hold.
