NEW DELHI | The Centre has informed the Supreme Court that rejection slips have not yet been issued to around 19 lakh people excluded from Assam’s final National Register of Citizens (NRC), as the 2019 register is yet to be formally notified.

In an affidavit filed before the apex court, the Registrar General of India (RGI) said the state NRC coordinator was still working on a security framework for preserving the NRC data.

The NRC data has not yet been handed over to the RGI, the affidavit said. The final register can be formally notified only after the data is received by the Registrar General. “Enactment of the security regime for NRC data by the state coordinator is in progress, and hence data has not been shared with the Registrar General of India (RGI),” the affidavit stated.

The Centre further informed the court that the process of issuing rejection slips to those excluded from the final NRC “has not been started yet”. The final NRC was published in August 2019 after a prolonged verification process. It included around 3.11 crore applicants, while 19.07 lakh applicants were left out of the final list.

Rejection slips are significant because they are intended to inform excluded applicants of the grounds for their exclusion and provide a basis for challenging the decision before Foreigners Tribunals. The Supreme Court had earlier directed the state NRC coordinator to establish a mechanism for issuing the slips. However, the coordinator informed the RGI in October 2020 that the slips could be issued only after the final NRC was formally notified by the Registrar General.

The apex court on Friday deferred the matter for hearing to November 6 after the Assam government sought additional time to file its response. The petitions before the court were filed by the Assam State Jamiat Ulama, All Assam Minority Students Union, Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind and others. The petitioners have sought rejection slips for those excluded from the NRC as well as NRC cards for applicants included in the final list.

The latest affidavit leaves the formal status of the 2019 NRC unresolved, with both the notification of the final register and the issuance of rejection slips still pending.