New Delhi, July 20 (TIWN) The process of preparing the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam has been rigged due to corruption, believes the government which now wants to engage senior officers for re-verification of the exercise aimed at identifying illegal immigrants for deportation.

The government is of the view that the re-verification should be administered by officials, who were not involved in the initial process, and also at senior level to enable fair and independent verification.   

The Centre is willing to engage Class I officers, who have extensive "knowledge and experience of handling process of investigation/enquiry" specifically for the re-verification.   There have been instances where field level officers have been arrested for taking bribes for entering the names in the NRC list.   The suspicion of corruption in the process was articulated by the Centre in the Supreme Court on Friday, when it sought more time beyond the July 31 deadline for publishing the final list of NRC.   

In the draft NRC lists published in July 2018 and June this year, around 41 lakh people have been excluded. Around 36 lakh have filed claims against their exclusion and objections have been filed against two lakh inclusions.