NRC officer cites Wipro contract expiry for NRC data going offline; Cong says 'deliberate'

Congress leader Gaurav Gogoi has accused the BJP-led central government of deliberately making Assam's NRC list data 'vanish' from its official website. Taking to Twitter, the Assam MP wrote that the loss of NRC data in Assam is "deliberate" by the BJP. "How can a Rs 1600 crore project be so unprofessional and not renew their membership of a cloud platform?" he asked. 

'How can a Rs 1600 crore project be so unprofessional?'

He added that "This is to derail the current NRC exercise in Assam and demand a new one which will be independent of the Supreme Court."

However, after Assam's National Register of Citizens (NRC) list data went offline from its official website, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Wednesday said the data is safe and there was some technical issue which will be resolved soon. "NRC data is safe, there is some technical issue in visibility on cloud. It is being resolved soon," the MHA said.

'Contract was not renewed'

NRC authorities claim non-renewal of the contract with IT firm Wipro as the reason for the data's disappearance. "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 co-coordinator (Prateek Hajela). So, the data got offline from December 15 after it was suspended by Wipro. I assumed charge on December 24," NRC state co-ordinator Hitesh Dev Sarma told news agency PTI.

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The NRC, which has been developed with the aim of segregating Indian citizens from illegal migrants, was implemented in Assam. The final list of NRC for the state was published in which 19,06,657 persons were excluded including those who did not submit their claims. After the final list was published on August 31, 2019, the complete detail of exclusion and inclusion of bonafide Indian citizens in the NRC was uploaded on -- 'www.nrcassam.nic.in'.

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(With agency inputs)