By Bhupen Goswami

Guwahati :The Supreme Court on Tuesday extended the time for publication of Assam National Register of Citizens till August 31. However, the top court rejected the joint plea of Centre and Assam for re-verification of 20% of draft NRC data to eliminate large scale inclusion of illegal migrants. Supreme Court extends the date for final publication of Assam NRC till Aug 31 but refuses Assam, Centre plea for sample re-verification of names included/excluded, especially in border districts The Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi and Mr justice Fali Nariman today heard all sides and extended the NRC publication date for one month for a flood but refused to entertain the please of the centre and state for re-verification of 20% in the Borderingdistroct and 10% in the other districts. The Centre pleaded that 12% suspected nationals of bordering districts had entered the NRC list but SC refused to entertain that and fixed August 7 as the next date of hearing when the district wise position would be discussed. The Supreme Court decides to refuse Centre, Assam plea for sample re-verification of names included/excluded “wrongly” in draft NRC solely because of NRC Coordinator’s July 18 report that district wise re-verification has already been done during the adjudication of claims This is a big blow to Centre and State as they sought reverfication on the plea that lakhs of names of Bangladeshi were included in the NRC. But Supreme Court refused to accept that saying that reverfication of 27% was already conducted and the court was happy with that. This will be the final verdict of the Supreme Court on the publication as the original date was July 31. The verdict was hailed by the AASU and AAMSU which pointed out the last-minute plea as an attempt to delay it. However, the Assam Govt and the Central govt, as well as APW and the newly found Assam Sachetan Manch, were unhappy as they jointly mounted a pressure on the court to extend it.The order was passed by a bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice R F Nariman which perused the reports filed by the Assam NRC coordinator Prateek Hajela. The Centre and the Assam government’s stand were advanced by Attorney General K K Venugopal and Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, respectively.