The Supreme Court of India has refused to extend the deadline for the publication of final National Register of Citizens (NRC) which was set on July 31. While the draft NRC was published on July 30, 2018, the deadline for publication of final NRC was set on 31st July, 2019. The Supreme Court while refusing to extend the date of publication of final NRC, it has also ordered State NRC Coordinator Prateek Hajela and Election Commission to meet within seven days to decide how to conduct the citizen register verification hearings. Reporting to the top court, NRC Coordinator Hajela said that there were 36.2 lakh claims for inclusion of names in the final NRC. He added that over 2lakh objections were filed against names included in draft NRC till 31st December. Notices have been issued to the claimants 15 days prior to the hearing of the claims which will start from 15 February. The process for correcting names and other particulars that appeared in the final draft of NRC, however, has been started from January 2. The Apex court extended the last date to file claims and objections for inclusion of names from December 15 to December 31 and the correction to be made from January 2. The court’s order came after the Assam government asked it to extend the deadline. The state government had asked for an urgent hearing which the court had refused but had said that it would consider the plea. The top court had allowed the people to use five more documents to prove their citizenship which the NRC authorities have said that this has become an additional burden to make the process of inclusion fool-proof. The top court also said that the upcoming general election and exercise of NRC should not be affected, and asked the competent authorities to sit together to plan them. The first draft was released in the intervening night of December 31, 2017 and January 1, 2018 comprising of 1.9 crore names. The second and final draft list of NRC was released on July 30 last year that included names of 2.9 crore people out of the total applications of 3.29 crore.