Congress demands all-party meeting on NRC
New Delhi, July 30 : The Congress on Monday said the central government should convene an all-party meeting at the earliest to apprise political parties of the situation arising from publication of the final draft of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) of Assam.
Talking to mediapersons here, Congress leader Anand Sharma said the issue has inter and intra-state dimensions, and can also have external dimensions.
"The government must convene a meeting of all parties to inform them of the situation, the steps it proposes to take until the disposal of the matter," he said.
Sharma said the issue has implications not only for Assam but also for the states of West Bengal, Tripura, Odisha and Meghalaya.
He said the way the NRC exercise has been carried out raises questions on the government's credibility.
"As we have been told, indigenous people have been affected, tea plantation workers have been affected. The government had given a list of 16 documents and any one of them was sufficient. We have been informed an overwhelming number of people had several documents," he said.
Sharma said the issue should not be politicised and the solution can be found in the ambit of the Assam Accord.
The Assam Accord was signed in 1985 between the central and Assam governments on one side, and the All Assam Students' Union (AASU) and the now defunct All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad (AAGSP), which spearheaded the movement, on the other, in the presence of then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.
Sharma said jury was out if the central government had presented the case properly in the Supreme Court.
He claimed that Home Minister Rajnath Singh had admitted in his remarks in the Lok Sabha that there were some shortcomings in the process of preparing the NRC.
Singh had said the final draft of NRC that was published on Monday was not the final list and urged the Opposition not to politicise it.
"Whatever work is going on in the NRC, is happening under the supervision of the Supreme Court. To say that the government has done it, and it is inhuman and brutal... such allegations are baseless. It is not the right thing to say," the Home Minister said.
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Man arrested with Rs 2.54-crore heroin in Mumbai
Mumbai (PTI): Police have arrested a man and seized over 500 grams of heroin worth Rs 2.54 crore in the illicit market from him in Mumbai, officials said on Friday.
The police's Anti-Narcotics Cell (ANC) made the drug seizure in Santacruz in the western suburbs. The operation was conducted by the Kandivali unit of the ANC on Thursday as part of a special crackdown against drug trafficking in the area, they said.
Acting on specific inputs, an ANC team conducted a raid in Santacruz (East) and intercepted a man. During a search, the team recovered 508 grams of high-grade heroin from his possession, an official said.
The seized contraband, a highly addictive, opioid drug derived from morphine, is estimated to be worth Rs 2.54 crore in the international market, he informed.
Following the seizure, a case was registered against the man under relevant sections of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985, and he was formally placed under arrest in the early hours of Friday.
The police are currently investigating the source of the drug and trying to identify the intended recipients of the consignment, he said.
