GUWAHATI: Sushmita Dev, Congress MP from Silchar in Bengali-dominated Barak valley , said, she did not expect 40.07 lakh people’s names would be left out from final NRC draft. She said leaving a large number of people out of the final draft meant another round of gruelling task especially for ordinary and poor people to prove their credentials for getting their names included in the final NRC.

“At the same time, I am not surprised that such a large number of people have been excluded from the final draft. It happened only because of consistent changes by the NRC authorities in the criteria of documents and persons to be eligible for the draft,” Dev, also the president of All India Mahila Congress, said.

Dev pointed out that initially, the NRC authorities said doubtful “D” voters and declared foreigners would be left out from the draft.

“Later the notification was issued that declared foreigners’ family members’ names would be left out till clearance from the foreigners’ tribunal. Also, descendants of D voters were later excluded. It’s not possible for ordinary people to meet the frequent changes in criteria,” Dev said.

She said that ordinary people had already gone to the expensive and time-consuming process of family tree verifications.

“Now there is going to be another time-consuming round of documents submissions for filing claims and objections, which will gruelling for ordinary people,” she added.

Dev said that time has come for the government to think on what it will do with the people who will be left out from the final NRC.

“Where will these people who are out of final NRC go? It has become an international issue now,” Dev said.

