The Supreme Court on Monday sought an explanation from the Assam government over the allegation that the state coordinator for NRC was making communal statements.

The apex court bench headed by Chief Justice SA Bobde also comprising justices B R Gavai and Surya Kant observed, “He should not be saying all this. You (Assam government) have to explain this. Whatever you want. He should not be saying all this,” after senior advocate Kapil Sibal drew the attention to the alleged statement made by the state NRC coordinator.

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The petition also sought removal of the state coordinator Hitesh Dev Sarma.

Several other petitions have been filed relating to the NRC in Assam and the bench issued notices to the Centre and Assam Govt and sought response within four weeks.

A petition was also heard in which it was stated that around 60 children have been excluded from the NRC but their parents have been granted citizenship through NRC.

Attorney General K K Venugopal and Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre and the Assam government, said such children will not be separated from their parents.

The top court in the order said children whose parents have been granted citizenship through NRC will not be sent to detention centre.

The response on the petition has to be filed in 4 weeks.

The final National Register of Citizens (NRC) list in Assam was published on August 31, including names of 3.1 crore people and leaving out 19 lakh names. A total of 3,11,21,004 persons found eligible for inclusion in final NRC leaving out 19,06,657 persons including those who did not submit their claims.

The NRC is a list of all citizens domiciled in Assam and is being updated at present to retain bonafide citizens within the state and evict illegal settlers, purportedly migrants from Bangladesh.

The update process of NRC started in 2013 when the Supreme Court of India passed orders for its update. Since then, the apex court bench of Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi and Justice R Fali Nariman has been monitoring it continuously. The entire project was headed by the State Coordinator of National Registration, Assam, Prateek Hajela under the strict monitoring of the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court in October ordered the immediate transfer of Assam National Register of Citizens (NRC) coordinator Prateek Hajela to Madhya Pradesh on deputation.The Supreme Court move has come as a surprise for many.

Prateek Hajela is a 1995-batch IAS officer of Assam-Meghalaya cadre. Hajela, who hails from Madhya Pradesh, had led a team of 52,000 officials that sifted through over six crore documents of 3.3 crore applicants, in one of the most complex exercise to validate the Indian citizenship of the residents of Assam.

Drawing on his technological expertise, Hajela, who has a B.Tech degree in Electronics from IIT, Delhi, introduced an innovative mechanism for collecting and collating data of the family tree of every resident of Assam.

The legacy data consisted of the names of residents or their descendants who figured in the first NRC prepared in 1951, or in any of the electoral rolls up to the the midnight of March 24, 1971, or any other admissible document which would prove their presence in Assam or any part of India on or before that date.