New Delhi: The disappearance of final National Register of Citizen (NRC) data of Assam from the government's website has stirred a controversy, with the Communist Party of India (CPI) demanding Narendra Modi-led government to make its 'intentions clear.'
In an exclusive interview with ETV Bharat, CPI MP in the Rajya Sabha, Binoy Viswam accused the central govt saying that the Government definitely has ill motive behind their action and that is why the data got disappeared from Cloud.
The complete detail of exclusion and inclusion of bona fide Indian citizens in the Assam NRC was uploaded on government's official website "www.nrcassam.nic.in" last year in October, as per Supreme Court order.
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However, on clicking "Result for all NRC application as per draft NRC and Supplementary list of Inclusion and Exclusion (Final NRC)" on the website, "This page can't be reached" message appears.
Officials in the Home Ministry on the other hand said that NRC data is safe. "Some technical issues was visible on cloud...it is being resolved soon," the official said on condition of strict anonymity.
"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 co-coordinator (Prateek Hajela). So, the data got offline from December 15 after it was suspended by Wipro. I assumed charge on December 24," NRC state co-ordinator Hitesh Dev Sarma said clarifying the allegations.
Moreover, the costing to prepare the final NRC data in Assam has been approximated at around Rs 1300 crore. The list which was prepared as per the historic Assam Accord of 1985 has excluded more than 19 lakh people, it aims to identify illegal foreigners in Assam.
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Meanwhile, the IT firm Wipro in a statement has reportedly said that it was in 2014, the company was appointed as the system integrator for the NRC project in Assam. The services were provided in accordance with the terms of its contract with the NRC. The IT service 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 untill January end, 2020.
Wipro is willing to continue providing service if IT service agreement is renewed by the authorities, the statement provided from Wipro said.
"The BJP Government both at the Center and State were adamant to publish the NRC, and now they hardly bother about its existence. This is total negligence and failure on the part of the government," said CPI MP Viswam. He said that the Home Minister Amit Shah should come with a reply soon on the whole episode.
