Sahitya Akademi awardee and President of Assam Nepali Sahitya – Sabha Durga Khatiwada was named in the latest National Register of Citizens (NRC) Exclusion list released by the authorities on June 26.
As quoted by few media reports, Bharatiya Gorkha Parisangh National Secretary Nanda Kirati Dewan said that “Khatiwada holds 1951 National Register of Citizens of his father as legacy. Although names of all his family members’ have been included in the National Register of Citizens, he was excluded.”
Meanwhile, 60-year-old Khatiwada told The Indian Express he was marked as a Doubtful Voter in the late 1990s and in 2015, he had been declared as an Indian by a Foreigners Tribunal in Guwahati. His name was included in the final draft of NRC published last year.
Also read: Assam to hold instant hearing on NRC claims
Khatiwada said, “My name was included in the final draft of NRC but last week I found that I was mentioned in the exclusion list. My wife’s name is in the NRC draft, but the names of my younger daughter and son are not there. It has been said they were excluded because they were children of a Doubtful Voter. But I had won the case against my D-Voter tag. It seems that was never updated.”
“Our family is from Sonitpur district. My parents did not even know the ‘N’ of Nepal, and here they have tagged me as a doubtful voter,” he added.
Also read: Assam NRC Draft Exclusion List 2019: Steps to check your name online at nrcassam.nic.in
The Supreme Court-monitored NRC updation exercise is being carried out in Assam to identify illegal immigrants in the state which faced an influx of people from Bangladesh since the early 20th century.
The final draft of NRC was published in July last year and included 2.89 crore of the 3.29 crore applicants. In an additional exclusion list published last week, NRC authorities dropped 1,02,462 more persons. These people were found ineligible for exclusion during verification. They will get a chance to appeal against their exclusion.
