Guwahati, Oct 14: Assam Public Works (APW), the original petitioner in the Supreme Court which led to updating of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) nine years ago, has lodged an FIR against the NRC directorate and system integrator, Wipro Limited, alleging misappropriation of “huge amount of public money during the NRC update process”.
In the FIR addressed to the officer-in-charge of Paltan Bazar police station here on Friday, the city-based NGO, which has been monitoring the process of updating the NRC, for which the central government has already released Rs 1600 crore, alleged that “huge corruption has taken place during the NRC update process with the active role of the NRC directorate.”
“Wipro was entrusted as one of the prime software installation companies by the NRC directorate. Accordingly, Wipro had submitted bills from time to time for software installation and other system oriented work. One of the bills submitted by Wipro, amounting Rs 1.27 crore, was for the procurement of ‘Standard One Edition’ and ‘Oracle Intelligence Server Enterprise Edition’ the amount of which was paid during February 2017 to August 2017,” APW president Aabhijeet Sharma stated in the FIR.
“However, as per the ground report of National Institute of Smart Governance (NISG) submitted to Office of the Accountant General, Assam, no such system was installed and used for updating the NRC in Assam. The amount was cleared by the NRC directorate, by indulging in conspiracy and mutual understanding with Wipro Limited as revealed from the report,” Sharma stated in the FIR.
The organisation claimed that another conspiracy, which came to light after the report of the Accountant General (audit), was the submission of false generator purchase bills before the audit.
“The generators were shown to be installed after purchasing the same at 2500 NRC Seva Kendras (NSKs). Wipro submitted a bill of 1-2 KVA sets of generators which were shown to be purchased and installed at 2500 NSKs in the state, amounting to Rs 93,964 only. Accordingly, an amount of Rs. 34.76 crore was released to Wipro for installation of 3700 generators However, on field enquiry, the auditor at some NSKs came to know that the generators were not purchased but hired,” Sharma stated in the FIR.
“Moreover, the market price of the hired generators is also not Rs 93,964 as submitted in the bill but Rs 35000 each, which clearly indicates the involvement of the NRC directorate and Wipro Ltd, causing huge loss to government exchequer, the APW president stated.
The organisation further sought a thorough police investigation into the alleged financial irregularities by the system integrator and the NRC directorate.