NRC data vanish from official website 

The data of Assam’s National Register of Citizen (NRC) showing details of included and excluded persons, which was made available on the website in October last year on Supreme Court’s order, suddenly disappeared from the official website, a report in The Times of India(TOI) cited.

Debabrata Saika, Assam leader of opposition sent a letter to Registrar General and Census Commissioner about the sudden vanish of online data from official website.

“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,” Saikia wrote in his letter to the registrar general.

The Times of India quoted an official source at the NRC as saying, “The data were stored in cloud storage. But, the service period of the cloud storage provided by WIPRO expired and the subscription renewal was not done as there was no coordinator after the transfer of the former coordinator Prateek Hajela. After the new coordinator has assumed charge, the renewal process is underway and the data should be online in new few days.”

The Centre 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 the cloud. These are being resolved soon," a home ministry spokesperson said.

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 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.

(With PTI inputs)