Assam NRC data goes offline, Home Ministry says technical snag

The Ministry of Home Affairs on Wednesday said that the Assam National Register of Citizens (NRC) data went offline due to a technical issue on the cloud.

Officials close to the development reported that all Assam NRC data list was made offline from its official website due to non-renewal of contract with the IT firm Wipro.

The MHA added that it was ensuring that the data was safe and the snag would be resolved soon.

"The NRC data is safe. Some technical issues are in visibility on 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.

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.

The Home Ministry's clarification came after the Congress took on the government over the issue calling that the "missing" of the data a "malafide act".

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

Officials said that 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 Coordinator, Prateek Hajela. The data got offline from December 15 after it was suspended by Wipro. This resulted in panic especially amongst the people who have been excluded from the list as the rejection certificates were yet to be issued.

The final NRC excluded 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 Officials in Assam have also assured that data pertaining to the final NRC for Assam going offline is a temporary thing and the issue will be resolved in a few days.