As soon as the clock struck 10 on the August 31st morning, in the Ata village of western Assam’s Baksa district, Samsul Hoque’s house was filled by around a dozen men and women. It was raining. But it did not deter the crowd from stepping out of their homes.
Brimming with anxiety and hope, they were gathered to check their names in the National Register of Citizens (NRC) that had just been published. One of them whipped out a mobile phone and began the task at hand. One by one, he asked each one for their ARN (Application Receipt Number) to look up the results.
