FIR filed after online NRC data goes missing

New Delhi, Feb 13: An FIR has been filed against a former official for not surrendering the central data access in her custody before quitting the job in the wake of former NRC coordinator Prateek Hajela being transferred.

This comes in the wake of the NRC data stored online showing the list of included and excluded candidates going missing from the official website.

It may be recalled that the details were posted in October 2019 following an order of the Supreme Court.

On Tuesday, leader of the opposition in Assam, Debabrata Saikia sent a letter to the Register General and Census Commissioner, informing him about the data going missing.

"The data have vanished especially when 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 mala fide act and is prima facie a deliberate violation of the directive issued by the Hon'ble Supreme Court," Saikia also wrote in his letter.

Officials at the NRC office, however, said that the data should be back in a few days. The data was stored in the cloud storage and since the service period expired and the renewal of the subscription was not done following the transfer of former coordinator Prateek Hajela, the data is missing. The new coordinator would undertake the renewal process, following which the data will be back, the official also said.