Data from the final list of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) went offline sending a wave of uncertainty and shock amongst people. Later, it was brought to notice that the data has been made offline from the official website due to non-renewal of contract with the IT firm Wipro. The Congress party promptly called a “malafide act”.
The Home Ministry on Wednesday clarified that the NRC data was safe and there was some technical issue with the visibility on Cloud. “It will be resolved soon,” the ministry added.
The final list was published on August 31, 2019 and was soon uploaded on the official website ‘www.nrcassam.nic.in’. Tis included the complete details of exclusion and inclusion of bonafide Indian citizens in the NRC.
However, the data was not available for the last couple of days. This resulted in panic especially amongst the people who have been excluded from the list as the rejection certificates were yet to be issued.
When contacted, NRC State Coordinator Hitesh Dev Sarma accepted that the data has been made offline, but refuted the allegation of any “malafide” intent in it.
As per him, the cloud service for the huge set of data was provided by Wipro and their contract was till October 19 last year. However, this was not renewed by the earlier Coordinator, Prateek Hajela. Sarma was appointed in his place, after Hajela was transferred to his home ground, Madhya Pradesh. The data got offline from December 15 after it was suspended by Wipro.
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He informed that the state coordination committee had decided to do necessary formalities in its meeting on January 30 and wrote to Wipro during the first week of February.
“Once Wipro makes the data live, it will be available for the public. We hope that people will be able to access it in the next 2-3 days,” Sarma said.
“We are in touch with Wipro to renew the contract and the same will be done within the next few days. Once that happens the data will appear online again and applicants can view their details,” the official said.
Assam opposition was quick to react. Leader of the Opposition in Assam Assembly Debabrata Saikia wrote to the Registrar General of India and requested him to look into the matter urgently.
“It is a mystery as to why the online data should vanish all of a sudden, especially as the appeals process has not even started due to the go-slow attitude adopted by the NRC Authority. There is, therefore, ample scope to suspect that the disappearance of online data is a malafide act.”
The final NRC excluded 19,06,657 persons. A total of 3,11,21,004 names were included out of 3,30,27,661 applicants.
Officials in Assam have reassured that data pertaining to the final National Register of Citizens (NRC) for Assam going offline is a temporary thing and the issue will be resolved in a few days.