The Bharatiya Gorkha Parisangha on Saturday claimed that over one lakh people belonging to the community have been excluded from the final National Register of Citizens in Assam, The Hindu reported. The list, published on Saturday, included the names of 3.11 crore people but left out over 19 lakh.

Assam Bharatiya Gorkha Parisangha President Nityananda Upadhyay said he arrived at the figure after speaking to members of local units of the organisation. “We are waiting for the data to reach us in two-three days,” he said. “The number of rejected Gorkha people who are bona fide Indian citizens is expected to be more than 1 lakh as on date,” he said.

Upadhyay lamented that the final NRC final had belied expectations. “The NRC has been based on the historic Assam Accord,” he said. “It is time to realise that we have been identifying genuine Indian citizens based on documents, so inclusions have been done legally after multi-layered verification, but the numbers of foreigners traced after cases in the Foreigners’ Tribunals will not meet the expected lines that the government narrated.”

He said of the one lakh Gorkhas excluded from the list, around 20,000 are in the D list – a category comprising doubtful voters, while the rest face a surname mismatch. “The BGP will engage legal and para-legal community members trained to fight Foreigners’ Tribunal cases to help those excluded,” Upadhyay added. However, he admitted that the number of exclusions is lower than those in the draft NRC.

Those excluded from the NRC can apply to the Foreigners’ Tribunals to reconsider their exclusion.

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