Prateek Hajela transferred to Madhya Pradesh
The Supreme Court on Friday ordered the transfer of Assam National Register of Citizens (NRC) coordinator Prateek Hajela to Madhya Pradesh. Hajela is the one who led the process of updating NRC in Assam. A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi directed the government to notify his transfer within seven days.
The bench further said Hajela, the coordinator of the NRC, would be on deputation for a maximum period.
At the hearing, Attorney General KK Venugopal asked Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi if there was a reason for the transfer, to which the CJI responded: "is there a transfer without a reason?". But he refused to divulge it.
Hajela, who is from Madhya Pradesh, had submitted a confidential report to the Supreme Court in which he is believed to have sought the transfer away from Assam, that has been cleaved along communal and linguistic lines over the sensitive issue of NRC.
Who is Prateek Hajela?
Prateek Hajela is a 1995-batch IAS officer of Assam-Meghalaya cadre. He was tasked with the supervision of the National Register of Citizens in Assam. The final list of NRC was published on August 31, from which 19 lakh people were excluded.
He was also booked twice in the last month for alleged “discrepancies” in the final NRC list published on August 31. An indigenous organisation alleged that “even when people had correct documents NRC coordinator Prateek Hajela intentionally excluded the names of Goriya, Moriya and many indigenous sons of the soil”.
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