Prateek Hajela said a teary goodbye on Tuesday to Assam. Tears trickled down his cheeks as he expressed his gratitude to colleagues during his last meeting on Tuesday.
Hajela spent more than two decades in Assam. Today, during his farewell he took all his memories of twenty-three years along with him. "Looking back on my year, there are so many memories and stories that I will cherish forever,": Hajela said.
Introduction of the concept of "family legacydata", that traced the family tree of an applicant for validation ofcitizenship, brought him accolade.
The Supreme Court-mandated coordinator of NRC is an IASofficer of the Assam-Meghalaya cadre from the 1995 batch. He led the process ofupdating the NRC that took almost four years to complete.
The Supreme Court directed the central and Assam governmentsto transfer Prateek Hajela, the National Register of Citizens (NRC)coordinator, to Madhya Pradesh for the maximum permissible period as per therelevant guidelines.
Hajela comes from a prominent family of Bhopal. His fatherwas a Madhya Pradesh civil service officer and his elder brother Anoop is aleading doctor in Bhopal. His uncle PD Hajela served as the Vice-Chancellor ofAllahabad University and Sagar University in Madhya Pradesh.
Hajela built a team of 68,000 government officials andcontractual workers and specialists to run the NRC Secretariat in Guwahati andsome 2,500 Nagarik Seva Kendras across the state. The team accomplished thecomplicated task of digitisation of the record.
