NRC Data Goes Missing From Govt Website, As Online Storage Wasn't Renewed Says Official

While there's ongoing protest against Indian government's CAA, NRC, and NPR proposals, the Assam government has suffered an easily avoidable blunder. The Assam government's online NRC data which mentioned the names of people on and off the list has disappeared from the official government website.

Yes, the data's just gone, and for a truly embarrassing reason -- someone forgot to renew the online cloud storage subscription for the same, according to an NRC official.

PTI / AFP

The details of the NRC data were made available online on the website in October last year, following an order of the Supreme Court. For this data to go missing is a seriously embarrassing development over the handling of sensitive public NRC data, especially at a time when the issue continues to divide public opinion on the national stage.

The missing online NRC data was brought to light by Assam leader of opposition Debabrata Saikia on Tuesday, after she sent a letter informing the Registrar General and Census Commissioner about NRC data "vanishing all of a sudden" from the government website, according to a TOI report.

Where Saikia's accusing the Assam government of trying to deceive the public with the disappearing NRC data set, there seems to be a more practical explanation at hand.

Online subscription expired, please renew

An official source at the NRC office said, ¡°The data was stored in cloud storage. But the service period of the cloud storage provided by Wipro expired and the subscription renewal was not done as there was no coordinator after the transfer of the former coordinator Prateek Haleja," TOI quoted the official -- assuming Wipro is contractually obligated to operate and maintain the Assam government's website.

The official claims the online subscription renewal process is currently underway and the NRC data should be back online in "few days."

Needless to say this entire episode could have been easily avoidable if someone somewhere had just paid attention to their inbox -- because that's what happens whenever your cloud storage subscription is about to expire, the online service provider sends a series of reminders before and after the expiration date, as is normal with any paid online service.

For a government website, one would have assumed the process to be even more foolproof, with sufficient checks in place to avoid such an embarrassing circumstance, but that clearly wasn't the case here.