The biometric details of 40 lakh Assamese people, who filed claims and objections with respect to Assam’s National Register of Citizens (NRC), will be collected, the Centre has told the Supreme Court. After the final list of the NRC is published, people whose names are not included in the register will be issued Aadhaar number, in the same fashion as Aadhaar enrollment took place in the rest of the country. Attorney General K.K. Venugopal told a bench of justices consisting of Ranjan Gogoi, Navin Sinha and K.M. Joseph that the Centre has prepared the standard operating procedure (SOPs) for issues related to filing of claims and objections by 40 lakh people, after which the final NRC will be released. The Centre told the apex court that while hearings related to exclusions and objections are being conducted by NRC authorities, the state government began collecting the biometrics and started the enrolment of all the applicants of the NRC, in collaboration with the UIDAI. The Centre also said it would collect the Aadhaar numbers of those people who were not on the NRC but had an Aadhaar number. When the draft NRC was released on July 31, the government had proposed that the processing of claims and objections would take place from 30 August to 28 September 2018. However, the Centre told the SC that it is reasonable to give at least a two month period for receiving the claims and objections for 40 lakh people. Class 1 officers will be deployed by the State…
