As the Supreme Court of India recently agreed to hear a petition seeking a comprehensive and time-bound re-verification of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) updated in Assam during 2014–2019, the people of Assam may expect a correct list of genuine nationals living in the north-eastern state. On 22 August 2025, the apex court responded positively to the plea filed by Hitesh Devsarma, a former state coordinator of NRC Assam himself, for an error-free NRC. Admitting the writ petition, the SC issued notices to the Centre, the Assam government, the NRC coordinator, and the Registrar General of India (RGI).
The 1951 NRC for Assam was updated following the direction of the SC with the aim of detecting all illegal citizens, using 25 March 1971 as the cut-off date. This date had been accepted in the 1985 memorandum of settlement that ended the six-year-long Assam agitation to detect and deport millions of unrecognised migrants from Bangladesh. Following a petition by Assam Public Works, the SC ordered the updation of the NRC and reportedly monitored the process. Prateek Hajela, a 1995-batch IAS officer of the Assam-Meghalaya cadre, was appointed as the state coordinator to supervise the exercise. Soon after the final NRC draft was released on 31 August 2019, which left 19 lakh individuals undocumented, Hajela was transferred to his home state Madhya Pradesh for security reasons.
The NRC updating process soon became mired in corruption and malpractice. The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) later detected financial irregularities amounting to Rs 260 crore during the process and recommended penal action against Hajela and Wipro Limited, the system integrator. Even before the CAG report, Hajela’s successor Hitesh Devsarma had raised concerns about mishandling of the NRC process, alleging that it was designed to help a large number of infiltrators make it to the list. He accused Hajela of tampering with software to accommodate foreigners for personal gain.
As a result, hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshi Muslim settlers’ names were allegedly included in the NRC draft. An important verification mechanism, the ‘Family Tree Matching’ process, was also compromised by Hajela and his associates. Devsarma therefore demanded probes by the National Investigation Agency and the Directorate of Enforcement against Hajela.
Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has also admitted that the NRC draft list was faulty, stating that fraud was committed on the Asomiya people during the process, for which New Delhi spent Rs 1,600 crore. The chief minister asserted that Hajela prepared a flawed NRC for Assam. Meanwhile, conscious citizens continue to demand an authentic NRC and a fair probe into the CAG’s findings of corruption, as well as the deprivation of salaries meant for nearly 6,000 part-time workers.
These workers, employed as data entry operators (DEOs), were paid only Rs 5,500 to 9,100 per month—well below the country’s minimum wage—while Wipro was paid an average of Rs 14,500 per month per DEO. The total siphoned amount, even after deducting reasonable profit margins, is estimated at over Rs 100 crore, which allegedly still remains with Wipro or its subcontractor Integrated System & Services.
Despite the seriousness of the issue, the Assam media by and large remained reluctant to report on the financial irregularities. In fact, most local journalists spread misinformation instead, for reasons best known to them. Some Guwahati-based television anchors went so far as to claim that the NRC final draft was the most valuable document for the indigenous population, lobbying for its acceptance without further verification.
At least one TV talk-show host was named and shamed on social media, but he has not responded to the allegations to date. An outspoken journalist even published a book praising Hajela’s work as unparalleled, going so far as to call for national recognition for him.
A genuine probe, if carried out, is expected to unearth all guilty individuals who attempted to cheat the nation and its people for their selfish gains.
