Question 2947

In the given passage there are blanks, each of which has been numbered. Against every four words are suggested, one of which fits the blank appropriately. Find out the appropriate words in each case. Home Minister Amit Shah’s announcement of a___(1)___for a nationwide National Register of Citizens (NRC) is worrisome on several counts, not the least of which is the apparent inability to learn from the experience of___(2)___the humongous exercise in Assam. The government, he said, would also re-introduce the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) in Parliament that___(3)___the grant of Indian citizenship to all refugees from minority communities in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. In all three nations, Muslims are in a majority, and therefore, the___(4)___effectively denies benefit to Muslim minorities___(5)___other neighboring countries, including Myanmar where Rohingya Muslims face persecution. Along with the promised combination of the NRC and CAB, the Home Minister___(6)___ that the NRC process would “naturally” be conducted in Assam again with the rest of the country. Interestingly, this comes just days after Ranjan Gogoi, who ___(7)___the NRC process, demitted office as Chief Justice of India. Clearly, the Assam proposal will be in defiance of the Supreme Court, which directed the entire NRC registration specific to Assam through all its tortuous details. There is still no clarity on what the end results mean for the 19 lakh plus people who___(8)___themselves outside the NRC, potentially stateless and at risk of “deportation” to Bangladesh, which refuses to acknowledge, let alone accept them. Given that the NRC process in Assam___(9)___ rooted in the specificities of the 1985 Assam Accord, and as the government never tires of saying, a court-mandated process, extending it to the entire country is both illogical and bizarre. Flawed it might have been, but the NRC exercise, overseen by the Supreme Court, involved the active___(10)___of the Central and State governments. For the government to repeat the exercise merely because the numbers thrown up are politically inconvenient for the ruling BJP, makes no sense at all. If there is a lesson from Assam, it is that there is no right way of going through a process such as the NRC. Select the most appropriate option for blank 9.