Assam NRC a tool to render Muslims stateless: US panel on religious freedom
A federal US commission on international religious freedom has alleged that National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam is a tool to “target religious minorities and to render Muslims stateless”.
Observing that the final NRC list, which validates bona fide Indian citizens of Assam, has excluded 19 lakh residents, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) on Friday said that a number of domestic and international organisations have expressed concern that the NRC is a “targeted mechanism to disenfranchise Assam’s Bengali Muslim community, implicitly establishing a religious requirement for citizenship and potentially rendering large numbers of Muslims stateless.” The National Register of Citizens (NRC) is a register containing names of all genuine Indian citizens.The process to update the register in Assam began following a Supreme Court order in 2013, with the state’s nearly 33 million people having to prove that they were Indian nationals prior to March 24, 1971.
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