National Register Of Citizens (NRC) Data Goes Missing; Govt Says Wipro’s Cloud Storage Plan Expired

All data of the final list of the National Register of Citizens (NRC), consisting of the people included and excluded from the final citizen rolls was published on August 31, 2019.

The NRC Data has disappeared from the official NRC website.

The complete list containing 3.11 crore inclusions and 19.06lakh exclusions had been uploaded on the website nrcassam.nic.in in October of 2019 on the orders of the Supreme Court.

The Opposition Party Suspicious!

All data of the final list of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) has been made offline from the NRC official website due to non-renewal of contract with the IT firm Wipro. 

The Assam leader Debarata Saika of the Congress sent a letter to the Registrar General  which read, “The data have vanished especially when 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 the online data is a malafide act and is prima facie a deliberate violation of the directive issued by the Honourable Supreme Court.” 

He added in the letter, “This act also violates the rules pertaining to the NRC, which stipulates various processes post publication of the NRC.” 

Has The Congress Made False Allegations?

The previous NRC State Coordinator Prateek Hajela was allowed to leave on November 11 following his transfer to his home state Madhya Pradesh. As per the orders Supreme Court, Hitesh Dev Sarma was appointed in his place on November 9.

But Sarma did not join immediately and went on a month-long leave after the Congress and other organisations were resistant to his appointment due to his alleged “highly partial and controversial” posts on social media.

The NRC State Coordinator Hitesh Dev Sarma accepted on Tuesday that the data has been made offline, but refused the claims of any “malafide” intent in it.

Sarma told PTI, “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. So, the data got offline from December 15 after it was suspended by Wipro. I assumed charge on December 24.” 

He notified that the state coordination committee had decided to do necessary formalities in its meeting on January 30, 2020. They also wrote to the Wipro in the first week of February and that the renewal process is in progress. 

Sarma added saying, “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.” 

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