Govt approves transfer of Assam NRC coordinator Prateek Hajela to MP

GUWAHATI: Complying with the Supreme Court’s order last month, the department of personnel and training under ministry of personnel, public grievances and pensions, has approved Assam NRC coordinator Prateek Hajela’s inter-cadre deputation to Madhya Pradesh for a period of three years.
On October 18, the Supreme Court bench hearing the NRC matter ordered for the inter-cadre transfer of Hajela to Madhya Pradesh on deputation for the maximum period permissible under the relevant rules and regulations within seven days.The centre subsequently asked for more time to complete the formalities.
The ministry in its order on November 1 stated, that the proposal for inter-cadre deputation of Hajela has been approved “in compliance” with the Supreme Court’s order.
A state government source said, “The NRC process is yet to be completed…only the list has been published but the next steps of issuing the reason of exclusion for the people to file their appeals in tribunals is yet to start. The NRC document itself has not been approved either by Supreme Court or the Registrar General of India.”
“Taking all these into account the state government had wanted more time for his deputation. We wanted to finish his job here,” the source said. Hajela’s replacement will now be decided by the RGI and the state government has no role here to play, he added.
Hajela is a 1995-batch IAS officer of the Assam-Meghalaya cadre and was made the NRC coordinator during the previous Congress government under Tarun Gogoi in 2013. All was going well after BJP came to power in 2016 with the promise to complete the NRC as its priority list.
But Hajela soon fell out with the BJP-led state government and the party after the draft NRC was published in July, 2018 and that is when he approached the apex court seeking his transfer to his home state, Madhya Pradesh.
Last August, the government had questioned the veracity of the NRC exercise done under the supervision of the apex court on the floor of the assembly. Parliamentary affairs minister Chandramohan Patowary said the draft NRC was flawed and stolen legacy data were used by lakhs of people to get their names included.
Hajela reported in the Supreme Court that he had already completed “incidental re-verification” of 27% of the applications, which BJP refuses to believe, saying that there was no announcement by Hajela before carrying out the re-verification process.
The SC had earlier asked Hajela to ignore criticism and statements made in the assembly and outside relating to the NRC and advised him to concentrate on meeting the deadline of August 31 for publication of the final NRC.
The state BJP wanted Hajela to continue here until he submitted the accounts of expenditure of Rs 1,600 crore on the NRC updating work.