Assam NRC List Data Goes Offline From Official Website, Home Ministry Says Technical Glitch

All data of the final list of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) has been made offline from its official website due to non-renewal of contract with the IT firm Wipro, prompting the Opposition Congress to doubt it as a “malafide act”. The complete detail of exclusion and inclusion of bonafide Indian citizens in the NRC was uploaded on its official website ‘www.nrcassam.nic.in’ after the final list was published on August 31, 2019.

When contacted, NRC State Coordinator Hitesh Dev Sarma accepted that the data have been made offline, but refuted the allegation of any “malafide” intent in it.

“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,” Sarma told news agency PTI.

“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.

Home Ministry Claims Glitch

The Centre on Wednesday said the NRC data in Assam is safe even though some technical issues were visible and that will be resolved soon. The Union Home Ministry clarification came in view of reports that data of the final list of the National Register of Citizens has been made offline from its official website.

“The NRC data is safe. Some technical issues are in visibility on cloud. These are being resolved soon,” a home ministry spokesperson said.

Out of the 40.37 lakh applicants who were not included in the draft list, 36.2 lakh have claimed inclusion. On 26 June, 2019, the NRC authority published an additional draft exclusion list, where an additional 1, 02,462 persons were included in the list of excluded persons, taking the total ineligible persons to 41, 10,169.

Assam, which had faced influx of people from Bangladesh since the early 20th Century, is the only state having an NRC that was first prepared in 1951 after the Census same year. It was prepared by recording particulars of all the persons enumerated during that Census.