India’s federal interior ministry on Wednesday said the NRC data in the state of 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.
The complete details about the NRC exercise was uploaded on the official website ‘www.nrcassam.nic.in‘ after the final list was published on August 31, 2019.
The data was not available for a couple of days and it created panic in the public, mostly among the people excluded from the list as the rejection certificates were yet to be issued.
Meanwhile, IT major Wipro on Wednesday said authorities concerned did not renew the services contract for the project after it expired in October 2019.
In an e-mailed statement, the Bengaluru-based company said it had continued to pay the hosting service fee until January end “as a gesture of goodwill” and that it is willing to continue providing these services if the agreement is renewed by the authorities.
Wipro was appointed as the system integrator for the NRC project in Assam in 2014.
“As an IT services provider, Wipro was tasked with providing the technical architecture and technology solutions for the project,” it said in the statement.
“The IT Services Contract was not renewed by the authorities upon its expiry in October, 2019. However, as a gesture of goodwill, Wipro continued to pay the hosting service fee until January-end, 2020.”
However, Wipro did not comment on the quantum of dues or whether discussions were underway to resolve the issue.
NRC State Coordinator Hitesh Dev Sarma accepted that the data has been made offline, but refuted the allegation of any “malafide” intent in it.
Sarma said the contract with Wipro was not renewed by the previous coordinator, resulting in data going offline.
He said the state coordination committee had decided to do necessary formalities in its meeting on January 30 and wrote to the Wipro during the first week of February.
“Once Wipro makes the data live, it will be available for public. We hope people will be able to access it in the next 2-3 days,” Sarma said.
The final NRC was published by excluding 19,06,657 persons. A total of 3,11,21,004 names were included out of 3,30,27,661 applicants.
After the earlier NRC State Coordinator Prateek Hajela relinquished the charge on November 11 following his transfer to home state Madhya Pradesh on a direction from the Supreme Court, Sarma was appointed in his place on November 9.
