There seems to be no respite for Prateek Hajela, the former State Coordinator of Assam’s National Register of Citizens (NRC). Ever since the final NRC was published on August 31, 2019, excluding over 19 lakh people, the BJP that is in power both in the state and at the Centre, has been targeting Hajela, claiming that the list includes names of ‘foreigners’.
In a fresh FIR filed against him, Hajela stands accused of data tampering. On February 7, acting on a FIR filed by Assam Public Works (APW), an NGO that is the main petitioner in the NRC case in the Supreme Court, the Assam CID booked Hajela on charges of tampering data in the final list. Then again on February 12, the 50-year-old IAS officer from the Assam-Meghalaya cadre was embroiled in a fresh conspiracy where NRC data went missing from the website.
It appears the data went missing from the NRC website first on December 15 as the contract for hosting had not been renewed with Wipro, that agreed to continue hosting the data till end of January due to goodwill even after the expiry of its contract.
APW has been at the forefront of the alleged “witch-hunt” against Hajela. Earlier, in December 2019, APW president Abhijeet Sharma and general secretary Dhrubajyoti Talukdar, had met with Hitesh Dev Sharma who took over as the NRC state coordinator after Prateek Hajela was shunted out amidst security concerns. APW submitted a nine-page memorandum demanding that a probe be conducted by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). They also asked for an independent audit of the NRC software, application and IT infrastructure.
There were also allegations that Data Entry Operators of the same immigrant community were employed in NRC Seva Kendras (NSK) in immigrant dominated areas, and that this led to improper verification of family tree and legacy data.
The APW memorandum named five software development companies; WIPRO, BOHNIMAN SYSTEM Pvt. Ltd., Maddoc Technologies, Trans Technologies Solutions, and RJ-45 Technologies, involved in the NRC process, and accused them of committing a corruption of Rs. 100 crores.
Previous corruption charges have been about artificially inflating prices of equipment purchased, as well as lack of accountability in paying salaries and giving perks to special advisors hired by Hajela. It is no secret that the BJP was upset that a large number of Muslims had made it into the final list.
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