Over 9.3 lakh persons in Assam whose biometrics were frozen when the process to update the National Register of Citizens was underway are now set to receive their Aadhaar cards after a five-year wait.

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma announced on Wednesday that the Centre has directed the Unique Identification Authority of India to unfreeze their biometrics, allowing for Aadhaar numbers to be issued to them.

The Unique Identification Authority of India had frozen the biometrics of 9,35,682 people who had applied for Aadhaar numbers from February 2019 to August 2019, ahead of the publication of the National Register of Citizens.

Assam published a draft National Register of Citizens on July 31, 2018, with the aim to separate Indian citizens from undocumented immigrants living in the state. As per a standard operating procedure set by the Supreme Court, those left out of the list had to submit their biometrics during hearings held to determine if they were Indian citizens, according to The Indian Express.

After the hearings were completed, the state published the final list National Register of Citizens on August 31, 2019. The biometrics of those who applied for Aadhaar numbers in the months leading up to the final list being published were locked by the Unique Identification Authority of India.

Sarma said the Assam government initially believed that the 9.3 lakh persons were among more than 19 lakh individuals who were left out of the National Register of Citizens. However, the government later found that there was no correlation between biometrics being locked and the National Register of Citizens, he said.

“They blocked the biometrics of everyone who applied for Aadhaar cards from February 2019 to August 2019,” Sarma said, according to The New Indian Express. '“These are people from across communities. The Aadhar cards of even those, who made it to NRC, were blocked.”

The chief minister said that with the Centre’s order on Tuesday, these individuals would now be able to collect their Aadhaar cards in the next 15 to 30 days.

In 2022, Scroll reported that many of those whose biometrics were frozen ahead of the publication of the final National Register of Citizens struggled to get rations after the Assam government made it mandatory to link ration cards with Aadhaar. Many people also experienced difficulties in getting jobs, school admissions and scholarships as they did not have Aadhaar numbers.

Also read: In Assam, an Aadhaar-NRC logjam threatens to cut off 15 lakh people from vital food rations