Assam NRC Online Data Goes Missing from Official Website

Guwahati, February 12, 2020:

The online data of the final list of Assam’s National Register of Citizens (NRC), which had a detailed information of the included and excluded people, are missing from NRC’s official website.

The official website, www.nrcassam.nic.in carried the complete details of Indian citizens of Assam and the final list of the NRC was uploaded on August 31, 2019.

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This has prompted the Opposition Congress raise concerns on the sudden omission. Assam leader of Opposition, Debabrata Saikia addressed a letter to the Registrar General stating, “The data have vanished especially when 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.”

NRC State Coordinator Hitesh Dev Sarma said that the reason behind the sudden disappearance of the online data was due to the expiry of the cloud service provided by Wipro. He said that the service was not renewed by the previous Coordinator, Prateek Hajela.

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It may be mentioned here that the final NRC that was published on August 31, 2019 had a total of 3,11,21,004 names in it. The citizenship exercise targeted at filtering the illegal Bangladeshis residing in Assam had drawn widespread criticism due to its topsy-turvy turn of events.

The previous Coordinator, Prateek Hajela was transferred to his home state Madhya Pradesh on the order of the Supreme Court days after the publication of the Assam NRC. The new NRC Coordinator Hitesh Dev Sarma also was on leave after his appointment after he drew criticism for his “controversial” Facebook posts.

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The sudden disappearance of the huge set of online data of such a crucial citizenship exercise has created panic among the ones whose names were excluded from the NRC and also from the authorities and learned.

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