'Assam NRC data safe', Centre clarifies after it disappears from website

A day after it was reported that the data of the final list of National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam has went offline, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Wednesday (February 12) clarified that it is completely safe. The MHA cited 'technical glitches' for the issue and added that they will be resolved soon.

"The NRC data is safe, there is some technical issue in visibility on Cloud. It is being resolved soon," a Home Ministry statement said.

The clarification came after reports pointed out that all data of the final NRC list has been made offline from the govt's official website due to non-renewal of the contract with the IT firm Wipro. Following the incident, Congress-led opposition termed it as a "malafide act". 

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.

NRC State Coordinator Hitesh Dev Sarma accepted that the data has 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 IT firm Wipro and their contract was till October 19 last year. However, this was not renewed by the previous coordinator.

So, the data got offline from December 15 after it was suspended by Wipro, Sarma said.

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.

After the final list was published on August 31, 2019, the complete details of exclusion and inclusion of bonafide Indian citizens in the NRC was uploaded on its official website 'www.nrcassam.nic.in'.

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.