Why the nationwide NRC proposed by Amit Shah is being criticised

On November 20, Union home minister Amit Shah said in Parliament that the Nation Register of Citizens (NRC) would be prepared for every state in the country. Till now, an NRC has been prepared only in Assam. Necessitated by widespread allegations of massive and unabated illegal immigration from Bangladesh, the state had taken out its first NRC list in 1951. This NRC was updated on August 31 this year through a massive exercise monitored by the Supreme Court of India and it was found that 1.9 million of the 329 million, who had applied for inclusion of their names in NRC, were not eligible for citizenship. Immediately after Shah's statement in Parliament, Assam finance minister and the home minister's trusted lieutenant Himanta Biswa Sarma addressed a press conference in Assam and said that the state government had decided to reject the Supreme Court-monitored NRC as it "included many who should not have been and excluded many who are genuine Indian citizens". In fact, not a single stakeholder in the NRC process seemed to be happy with the final outcome. There has been a widespread perception in the state that large numbers of infiltrators from Bangladesh, mostly Muslims-between 4 million to 10 million-have illegally entered the state posing a serious threat to the cultural and linguistic identity of the indigenous population and their rights over resources and political power. Hence, the inclusion of a large number of people who belong to local tribes and the Assamese-speaking section of the state population, in the group not eligible for citizenship came as a huge disappointment. The result was electorally significant for the Bharatiya Janata Party too as, according to unofficial sources, around 50 per cent of the 1.9 million excluded from the NRC are Hindus, the core vote bank for the saffron party.