All the data related to Assam’s National Register of Citizens has disappeared from the official website, PTI reported on Tuesday. The final NRC list – an exercise to update the citizens’ database – for Assam was published on August 31, 2019. It excluded over 19 lakh people or around 6% of the population.
The complete detail of exclusion and inclusion of bonafide Indian citizens in the NRC was uploaded on its official website, www.nrcassam.nic.in, in October 2019 as per a Supreme Court order. However, if someone clicks on “Result for all NRC applicants as per Draft NRC & Supplementary list of Inclusion and Exclusion (Final NRC)” on the website, only one message pops up: ‘This page can’t be reached”.
An unidentified official at the NRC office said the data were stored in cloud storage. “But, the service period of the cloud storage provided by Wipro expired and the subscription renewal was not done as there was no coordinator after the transfer of the former coordinator Prateek Hajela,” the official told The Times of India.
After Hajela was transferred, Hitesh Dev Sarma was appointed by the Assam government as the NRC state coordinator. “After the new coordinator has assumed charge, the renewal process is underway and the data should be online in few days,” the official added.
Sarma said their contract with Wipro was till October 19, 2019. “However, this was not renewed by the earlier coordinator,” he told PTI. “So, the data got offline from December 15 after it was suspended by Wipro. I assumed charge on December 24.”
He added that the state coordination committee has written to Wipro earlier this month. “Once Wipro makes the data live, it will be available for the public,” Sarma said. “We hope that people will be able to access it in the next 2-3 days.”
The Ministry of Home Affairs also claimed that the data is safe, reported ANI. “There is some technical issue in visibility on cloud,” it added. “It is being resolved soon.”
Opposition Congress, however, doubt it to be a “malafide act”. On Tuesday, Leader of Opposition in the Assam Assembly Debabrata Saikia wrote a letter to the registrar general and Census commissioner informing about the “mystery” of the “online data vanishing all of a sudden,” reported The Times of India. “The data have vanished especially when the appeals process has not even started due to the go-slow attitude adopted by the NRC Authority,” Saikia said in his letter. “There is, therefore, ample scope to suspect that the disappearance of online data is a mala fide act and is prima facie a deliberate violation of the directive issued by the Hon’ble Supreme Court.”
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