Akbar Ali knew something bad would happen when he tripped on the threshold as he exited his house on August 13.
His family of 14 had been summoned to Rangiya, across the Brahmaputra, that day, for re-verification of their citizenship documents.
Tripping while going on a journey is considered ominous at Majartop, a village about 80 km west of Guwahati, and adjoining areas.
Left out
The “bad” took 18 days to happen. Mr. Ali, a 58-year-old tea-seller, was excluded from the final National Register of Citizens (NRC) that was published on Saturday, containing the names of 3,11,21,004 of the total of 3,30,27,661 applicants. Mr. Ali and his wife Saleha Khatun are among the 19,06,657 left out of the updated citizens’ list.
“My wife was the only one in our family who did not figure in the draft NRC published last year [July 30, 2018]. The notice I received on August 13 ordered me to be at the NRC service centre for a hearing along with all family members. I thought the last-minute notice would probably bring good news for my wife. I was wrong,” he said.
The NRC officials grilled Mr. Ali about the mismatch of the name of his father, whose name in the legacy data (voters’ list of 1966) read Janu Sheikh but was mentioned as Jan Mehmood in the land deed of 1960.
“I fail to understand how the same set of documents that made my four sons and four daughters Indians has put a question mark on my citizenship,” Mr. Ali said. He said he was not as worried as many others in his village, as his eight children and four grandchildren are in the NRC.
“I know there’s not much life left in me, but I was born an Indian and want to die an India,” he said.
Like Mr. Ali, Mirchan Nessa had assembled with some 60 others from the vicinity to listen to a group of lawyers who had come from Guwahati to advise them on how to go about challenging their exclusion.
Battling anaemia and other health complications, the 46-year-old Ms. Nessa had, along with six members of her family, gone to eastern Assam’s Golaghat district 20 days ago for re-verifying their documents. They had spent ₹25,000 for the 350 km journey and back.
“I sensed something was not right with the NRC notice, although we were all included in the draft NRC,” she said. As it turned out, she was left out of the NRC along with her nine-year-old granddaughter Samina Akhtar.
“I feel restless, have been unable to eat or sleep since yesterday [Saturday] — not because the government does not consider me an Indian but because they have destroyed my little darling’s future,” she said.
from Tricks News India https://ift.tt/2HGndUK
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