Guwahati: The Supreme Court has declined to entertain a plea to direct the government to stop the alleged harassment of people belonging to minority communities in Assam in the guise of detection and deportation of alleged foreigners.
The top court asked the petitioner to approach the high court with his grievances. “Petitioner would be at liberty to approach the High Court for appropriate relief,” a Bench comprising Justices D.Y. Chandrachud and Hima Kohli said.
The petitioner sought the Apex Court’s indulgence to stop the alleged harassment of people belonging to religious and linguistic minority communities in Assam in the guise of detection and deportation of alleged foreigners, Live Law reported.
Earlier, the Apex Court had deferred the hearing of the plea asking the petitioner to come back with more ‘structured reliefs’ as the prayers in the present petition are set out in a haphazard manner.
On Friday, Advocate, Mr. Adeel Ahmed appearing on behalf of the petitioner apprised the Bench about the same and sought its permission to file an application for modifying the petition.
The Bench asked him to go before the High Court, stating that the assistance of the judgment of the High Court would be beneficial in deciding the issues if the matter eventually comes up in appeal.
“Why don’t you go to the High Court with all these reliefs? Let us have the benefit of the judgment of the High Court and then you can come here…In many of these issues like, the burden of proof, nature of proof required, let’s have some idea from the High Court,” the Bench observed.
The petition seeks direction to authorities to not delete/exclude names from the ‘final draft’ of the NRC published on August 31, 2019; stop further identification of ‘Doubtful’ voters without proper verification; finalise the draft NRC only after providing opportunity to the person whose name are not there in the 2019 list to prefer appeal against the rejection of their applications.