Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Wednesday announced that 9.35 lakh people in his state will get Aadhaar cards as the Centre issued a direction to the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) on the issue.
"On July 29, 2024, the state government requested the Centre to release Aadhaar cards to 9.35 lakh people. On August 27, 2024, the Centre directed UIDAI to issue Aadhaar cards to these people. I met the Union Home Minister, I extend my gratitude to him," Sarma said.
The UIDAI had blocked issuing Aadhaar cards to those 9.35 lakh people when they gave their biometrics between Feb 2019 to August 2019, he added.
We couldn't establish a correlation between National Register of Citizens (NRC) and Aadhaar, the CM said.
Will resign even if one gets citizenship without NRC: Himanta
National Register of Citizens has been a key agenda of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government in Assam. A few months ago, CM Sarma asserted he would be the first to resign even if one person, who has not applied for the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in the state, gets citizenship.
His comment comes after protests erupted across Assam with opposition parties flaying the BJP government at the Centre for implementing the contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA) in March, paving the way for granting citizenship to undocumented non-Muslim migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.
''I am a son of Assam and if a single person who has not applied for NRC in the state gets citizenship, I will be the first to resign," the chief minister said on the sidelines of a programme at Sivasagar.
The protesters are claiming that lakhs of people will enter the state after the implementation of the CAA. ''If this happens, I will be the first to protest," he said.
The chief minister asserted that those who have come to India after 2014 will not get citizenship, and the number of such applicants will be "negligible".
''People do not want to identify themselves as foreigners. There may be 50,000-60,000 applications from three districts of Barak Valley while it will be negligible in districts of Brahmaputra Valley," he said.
(With agencies inputs)
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