The process of issuing rejection slips to 1.9 million people, who were excluded from Assam’s National Register of Citizens (NRC), has not begun yet because the final NRC is yet to be formally notified, the Centre has told the Supreme Court.According to the Final National Register of Citizens released in August 2019, names of 3.11 crore applicants were included in the final NRC while 19.07 lakh applicants were excluded from the list.The top court has been hearing petitions filed by the Assam State Jamiat Ulama, All Assam Minority Students Union, Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind and others seeking rejection slips for those excluded from NRC and NRC cards for those included in the final list.In an affidavit filed in the court, the Registrar General of India said the state NRC coordinator was still working on a “security regime” for preserving the NRC data and that the data had not yet been handed over to the Registrar General for notifying the final NRC.“Enactment of the security regime for NRC data by the state coordinator is in progress, and hence data has not been shared with the Registrar General of India (RGI),” the affidavit said, adding that the process of issuing rejection slips “has not been started yet” by the state NRC coordinator.Earlier, the top court had directed the state NRC coordinator to develop a mechanism for issuing rejection slips to people excluded from the final list to enable them to approach foreigners’ tribunals against rejections.The state NRC coordinator subsequently informed the RGI in October 2020 that rejection slips could be issued only after the latter notified the final NRC.The top court deferred the hearing to November 6 after the Assam Government sought time to file its response.