The chief of All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) Samujjal Bhattacharjya on Sunday questioned the delay in handing out punishments to those named in the anomalies relating to the updating process of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam.
This comes after glaring discrepancies were pointed out by a report submitted by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) in the Assam Assembly on Saturday.
The AASU chief said, “There should no further delay in dishing out punishments to the accused. Severe and exemplary punishment should be given to them.”
Bhattacharjya said, “Corruption at this level cannot be tolerated. Due to gross negligence of the Supreme Court’s directives, errors cropped up in the NRC compilation.”
Talking about the NRC in Assam, he went on to demand for an error free final draft to rid the state off illegal Bangladeshi immigrants.
Speaking further about the CAG report, Bhattacharjya said, “CAG report shows manipulation of NRC. The Central Government and the Government of Assam should apply to the Supreme Court for review of the matter.”
“Whoever is associated with the massive discrepancies in whatever capacity should be punished,” added the AASU chief.
It may be noted that a CAG report submitted to the Assam Assembly during the ongoing session highlighted massive anomalies in the process of updating the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam.
The CAG submitted a report for the year ended in 2020 which pointed out that improper planning led to as many as 215 software utilities to be added in a haphazard manner to the core software.
The CAG report read, “Due to lack of proper planning in this regard, to the extent of 215 software utilities were added in a haphazard manner to the core software. It was done without following the due process of either software development or selection of vendors through eligibility assessment following a national tendering.”
Highly secure and reliable software should have been used in the updating process, CAG further mentioned in the report.
According to the report, the improper development of the software and utilities for NRC data capture and correction provided the risk of tampering with the data without leaving any audit trail.
It said that the audit trail could have ensured accountability for the veracity of NRC data, however, the objective of a valid error-free NRC could not be met.
Moreover, the CAG also said that the project cost for the NRC went up from an initial Rs 288.18 crores to Rs 1602.66 crores due the time taken from what had been initially conceptualized.
