Special report: Ex soldier was among 100-plus ‘foreigners’ held in Assam in post-poll drive

On May 5, said Reena Biswas, some men came to her home in Assam’s Kamrup district and asked her husband, Dilip Biswas, to report to the police station. “He was not home, he had gone for work,” she recalled. “They said he should bring his documents with him. I asked, what documents? They said NRC documents.”
The NRC, or the National Register of Citizens, is a list of “genuine Indian citizens” living in Assam, currently being updated for the first time since 1951. The final draft of the register was published last year, leaving over 40 lakh applicants out.
But Dilip Biswas’s name was in the final draft. He had voted in the Lok Sabha elections on April 23. He had even stood for the panchayat elections five years ago as a Communist Party of India (Marxist) candidate, his wife said.
On May 6, he went to the Rangia police station, armed with his papers and accompanied by his uncle, Rabindra Chandra Biswas. Like his nephew, Rabindra Biswas had assumed the summons was to do with the citizens’ register – officials are hearing fresh claims to citizenship and objections to names already in the rolls before the final list is published on July 31, according to the current schedule.

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