New Delhi: Online data of the details about the included and excluded persons in Assam NRC are missing from the official website of NRC. If someone clicks on the space of the NRC website stating ‘Result for all NRC applicants as per Draft NRC & Supplementary list of Inclusion and Exclusion (Final NRC) Link 1 & Link, you will see nothing, except one message ‘this page can’t be reached’.
The final National Register of Citizens (NRC) list for Assam was published August 31, 2019, with the exclusion of over 19 lakh people. Prior to the publication of the final NRC list, the NRC authority published an exclusion list and an inclusion list.
But the data has disappeared from the official website of the NRC which was prepared to find out the genuine Indian citizens and detect foreign nationals who entered Assam after March 24, 1971 midnight.
The details of the persons in the exclusion and inclusion lists were made available on the website in October 2019 as per an order of the Supreme Court. The NRC exercise was carried out in Assam under the direct supervision of the apex court. The NRC update process was carried out during the tenure of IAS officer and state coordinator Prateek Hajela.
On Tuesday, the leader of the opposition in Assam Assembly and Congress leader Debabrata Saikia dashed off a letter to the Registrar General (RGI) and Census Commissioner informing about the “mystery” of the “online data vanishing all of a sudden,” says a media report.
The media report quoted Saikia as writing in his letter: “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 online data is a mala fide act and is prima facie a deliberate violation of the directive issued by the Hon’ble Supreme Court,” Saikia wrote in his letter.
The report quoted an official source at the NRC office as saying: “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.”
Sources added: “After the new coordinator has assumed charge, the renewal process is underway and the data should be online in new few days.”
After Hajela’s transfer, ACS officer Hitesh Dev Sarma was appointed by the Assam government as the NRC state coordinator. After his appointment, the Supreme Court asked the Assam government to look into the controversial remarks made by the new NRC state coordinator on his Facebook page.
