ASSAM TIMES POST
Guwahati : A day after disappearance of the updated citizenship data in Assam from the National Register of Citizenship official website “nrcassam.nic.in”, the NRC Authority has filed an FIR against one of its former official under the Official Secrets Act for failing to surrender an official access password to the sensitive document.
NRC State Coordinator Hitesh Dev Sarma rpt Sarma told reporter on Thursday that NRC authority had yesterday filed an FIR in Paltan Bazar Police station in Guwahati against a former Project Officer of NRC office under the Official Secrets Act for failing to hand over an access password to the sensitive document despite written reminders to her to do so.
“We have filed the FIR against the former NRC Project Officer for violating the Official Secrets Act as she did not surrender the access password when she is no longer authorised to hold the official password as she is a not an official of NRC office after she resigned on November 11 last year. She was a contractual employee and is a private citizen now after her resignation and is no longer authorised to hold the NRC password”, Sarma rpt Sarma said.
Asked if the NRC office realised now that its former employee had not hand over the official password in November rendering the authority unable to access the system, the NRC State Coordinator said, “we knew then and had, therefore, sent her several letters to hand over the password. But as she did not respond all these months, we filed the FIR against her yesterday for violating the Official Secrets Act.”
“The case has also been filed against the former employee as we must know if she has since her resignation tempered with the sensitive information pertaining to NRC”, he added.
Accepting that the data in the NRC website has been made offline, Sarma refuted the allegation of any “malafide” intent in it.
“…this was not renewed by the earlier Coordinator. So, the data got offline from December 15 last year after it was suspended by Wipro. I assumed charge on December 24,” Sarma said.
He also informed that the state coordination committee has discussed the issue 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 the public. We hope that people will be able to access it in the next 2-3 days,” Sarma added.
Reacting to the development, IT major Wipro said: “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.”
A Spokesperson of the Union Home Ministry on Wednesday clarified that the NRC data in Assam is safe even though some technical issues were visible and that will be resolved soon.
Meanwhile, senior journalist-cum-RTI activist Saket Gokhale has filed an RTI application to the NIC, the IT wing of the government, and made it public through his Twitter account seeking a copy of the contract with Wipro regarding online hosting and storage of the official NRC list of Assam.
“Please provide name and details of the company used for cloud storage of the Assam NRC list along with the contract signed with it thereof,” the RTI requested as he even sought all the relevant files pertaining to the contract renewal along with all official correspondence with Wipro and the cloud storage company.
In a separate tweet, the RTI activist questioned the NRC Authority’s decision to host the mammoth data on a private cloud service when the government has its own such platform.
“What’s even murkier is that govt-owned NIC has its own cloud service called Meghraj. Why the hell was the Assam NRC data stored on the Amazon AWS cloud when a domestic govt-owned option was freely available?” Gokhale tweeted.
Leader of the Opposition in Assam Assembly and Congress leader Debabrata Saikia wrote to the Registrar General of India and requested him to look into the matter urgently.
“It is a mystery as to why the online data should vanish all of a sudden, especially as the 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 malafide act,” he said.
Meanwhile, a complaint has been lodged against former NRC Assam State Coordinator Prateek Hajela by the Assam Public Works (APW) with the state police for allegedly tampering with the final NRC list published on August 31, 2019.
The complaint has been filed by the NGO APW, the original petitioner in the Supreme Court which led to the updation of the NRC in Assam, with the Assam CID, APW President Aabhijeet Sarma told reporters here on Wednesday.
The complaint filed by APW member Rajib Deka alleged that Hajela had tampered with the final list of NRC published on August 31, 2019, disobeyed the orders and directions of the Supreme Court, made a false document, caused forgery of public register and committed offences under under Cyber laws for altering or changing the public records by misusing his powers and positions.
The Supreme Court had in an order on August 13,2019 had directed Hajela to formulate a ”security regime of equal parameter as that of provided for securing AADHAR data before publishing the Final list of NRC so that no one can perform illegal activities after its final publication”.
The Final list of NRC was published on August 31, 2019 and after the publication it was reported in various social networks and media that many anomalies were found in the final list and many illegal and doubtful persons had been able to insert their names in it, the APW alleged in their complaint.
