By Nava J Thakuria
Assam Public Works (APW), a leading civil society organisation of northeast India, while expressing dissatisfaction over the State government for avoiding necessary action on the National Register of Citizen (NRC) updation scam, urges Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his intervening on the matter so that the guilty individuals get adequate punishments under the law.
In an official letter (dated 5th April 2023), signed by APW chief Aabhijeet Sharma, the organisation accused IAS officer Prateek Hajela of various kinds of mismanagements during his tenure as the NRC State coordinator in Guwahati. The letter also added that the Comptroller General of India (CAG) had already highlighted serious irregularities in the Rs 1,600 crore NRC updation project for Assam.
The CAG report, which was tabled before the State legislative assembly a few months back, detected a financial irregularity to the tune of Rs 260 crore, where around Rs 155 crore were siphoned away by the system integrator (Ms Wipro Limited) depriving around 6000 contractual employees, who worked as data entry operators. The highest national audit body held Hajela (and also Wipro) responsible for the corruption and recommended legal actions against them.
Mentionable is that the APW remains at the forefront of various public campaigns against terrorism, corruption, nepotism for two decades and it was main petitioner in the Supreme Court demanding the NRC updation in Assam. The organisation lodged an FIR with a city police station last year citing the corruption of Hajela, but the complaint is yet to be registered by the State police. Two other relevant FIRs, lodged by Hajela’s immediate predecessor (Hitesh Dev Sarma) are also not entertained by the police department till date.
“Keeping in view of the above, we ardently request you to look into the matter personally and use your good office to direct the Enforcement Department to inquire into the matter and book the culprits involved in the corruption,” said the letter, where it is also added that under Hajela’s patronage, over a few hundred thousand illegal migrants were enlisted in the draft NRC (which was released in 2019, but yet to be notified by the Registrar General of India).
Finally the APW letter argued that since the NRC is related to national security, reasons behind the inclusion of Bangladeshi nationals in it should be probed by the Central Bureau of Investigation. A huge amount of money from the Middle East countries was suspected to be involved in the foul play for including illegal settler’s names in the NRC, hence the organisation demands an investigation by the National Investigation Agency too.
- The writer is a northeast India-based senior journalist with the background of engineering
