GUWAHATI: Beginning on August 1, Assam's National Register of Citizens (NRC) will have a new state coordinator. Hitesh Dev Sarma, the current third State Coordinator for NRC, will retire on July 31. IAS officer Partha Pratim Mazumdar will take his place. Prateek Hajela, a bureaucrat, was the first.
Mr. Mazumdar would be transferred as a secretary to the home and political department as well as the state coordinator for the NRC and the in-charge of the NRC Directorate, according to a notification issued by Jadav Saikia, secretary to the personnel department. He is currently employed as the Women and Child Welfare Department's Secretary and Registrar of Cooperative Societies.
Since the final draught list of citizens was released on August 31, 2019, the Supreme Court-monitored NRC process to remove "illegal immigrants" from Assam has been in limbo. Out of 3.3 crore candidates, 19.06 lakh were removed from the list due to concerns regarding their citizenship.
Less than three months after the complete draught National Register of Citizens was published, the supreme court transferred Mr. Hajela to his home state of Madhya Pradesh. It appears that this was done because the BJP-led Assam government found the list of citizens to be inaccurate and requested re-verification of 10–20 percent of the names in all the districts.
In November 2019, a month after he left Assam, Mr. Sarma succeeded Mr. Hajela.
ONGC signs gas sale MoU for Tripura’s Khubal field
Assam State Transport launches bus e-ticketing service
