The Supreme Court on Tuesday pulled up the Centre over the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam saying that the Union home ministry comes up with different stories to destroy the process.
The top court’s observation came on the home ministry’s plea for withdrawal of 167 companies of combined armed forces for two weeks from Assam as they will be deployed for elections. Rejecting the plea, a bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi said the Centre is not cooperating and it seems the entire effort of the home ministry is to destroy the NRC process.
The government sought the suspension of the NRC exercise to which the court said “it is too much to ask for both.” The Supreme Court bench said elections and NRC can go on simultaneously. The court told the government that if it wanted the citizen register process to go on there were “1001 ways to do so”.
The SC asked the Election Commission to consider exempting certain state officers from election duty to ensure that the NRC process is not hampered