Altogether 19,06,657 people have been excluded from the final Assam National Register of Citizens (NRC) published on Saturday.

A total of 3,30,27,661 people had applied for inclusion of their names in the document.

“Taking into account all the persons already included and after disposal of all Claims and Objections and proceedings under Clause 4(3), it has been found that a total of 3,11,21,004 numbers of persons are found eligible for inclusion in final NRC leaving out 19,06,657 numbers of persons including those who did not submit Claims,” NRC authorities said in a statement.

Following the publication of the NRC complete draft last year and an additional draft of deletion earlier this year, 41.09 lakh of people remained excluded.

There is no immediate fear of detention for the excluded. They can file an appeal in the Foreigners’ Tribunals within 120 days.

As the cases have to be disposed of within six months and there are just 100 tribunals. The government has taken a decision to set up another 200 tribunals.

People not getting relief from the tribunals can move the High Court and then the Supreme Court.

The government has asked people not to be worried. It said it would extend legal aid to the excluded.

Congress and some NGOs have also made a similar offer.

Earlier, all political parties insisted that the updated NRC should not include any immigrant and exclude any genuine Indian.

The BJP had been very critical of the exercise for the alleged inclusion of names of illegal immigrants in the Muslim-majority districts bordering Bangladesh.

What strengthened its suspicion was the high inclusion of names of people in the border districts compared to some districts deep inside and far away from the international border.

Assam got the updated NRC after a wait of 34 years since the Assam Accord was signed at the end of a six-year-long bloody anti-immigrants’ agitation.

It was committed in the accord, signed in 1985 between the then Rajiv Gandhi government and the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU), that the NRC of 1951, unique to Assam, will be updated. The demand for its updation was in the light of alleged unabated migration of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

Given the threat posed to Assam’s demography and pressure on land, language and culture, the anti-foreigners’ agitation was launched. In due course, a political party, Asom Gana Parishad, was born out of it which promised to rid Assam of the immigrants. It tasted power twice but the problem remained.

The Assamese had fought for long demanding the updation of the NRC. They believed its updation could only help detect and deport the immigrants. As such, when the Supreme Court in 2013 issued an order to the Centre for the updation of the document, the Assamese had heaved a sigh of relief. They believed they were, at last, going to get something that will protect them.

The updation of NRC was a gigantic exercise, said to be the biggest ever under the sun. During the six-year-long exercise, the NRC authorities had to examine over 60 million documents submitted by a little over 3.29 crore applicants.