CAG REPORT ON NRC

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About

• Recently the Comptroller and Auditor-General of India (CAG) released a report on the National Register of Citizens (NRC) update exercise in Assam.
  • The report has highlighted serious irregularities, including the “haphazard development” of software for the exercise, making it vulnerable to data tampering, and profits earned by the system integrator (SI) by violating the Minimum Wages Act.

National Register of Citizens (NRC)

• Assam is the only State in India that initiated an exercise to update the NRC of 1951 with March 24, 1971, as the cut-off date for citizenship.
  • This date was decided in the Assam Accord of 1985 which ended a six-year anti-foreigners movement.
  • It contained a provision that all ‘foreigners’ who came to Assam after 1971 Should be detected and deported, and also talked about the deletion of foreigners' names from the electoral rolls.
  • The Citizenship Act of 1955 was amended for Indian-origin People who came from Bangladesh before 1966 to be deemed as Citizens.
  • Those who came between 1966 and 1971 were eligible for Citizenship after registering and living in the State for 10 years while those entering after 1971, were to be deported.
• In 2013, Supreme Court asked the State government to update the 1951 NRC in a time-bound manner under the supervision of the Supreme Court.
• The complete draft of the Assam NRC was published in August 2019, excluding 19.06 lakh out of 3.3 crore applicants, some indigenous groups have refused to accept the current draft.
  • The petitions for re-verification of the NRC to weed out “Bangladeshis” are pending before the Supreme Court of India.

Concerns raised by CAG

●        When the process to update the NRC was started in 2014 the project cost was around ₹288.18 crore.

○         However, till March 2022, the total project cost increased by more than 5 times due to additional time to complete it and changes in the updated software. The project cost increased to Rs 1,602.66 crore.

○         The CAG report said that audit records reflect irregularities in the utilization of funds including “excess and inadmissible payment to vendors”.

●        The CAG found that the number of wages paid to the outsourced staff was 45.59%-64.27% less than what was approved by the NRC coordination committee.

○         The difference in wages allowed the undeserved benefit of ₹155.83 crores to the system integrator and this is beyond the 10% “reasonable profit margin”.

• The CAG noted that the due process of software development and vendor selection via tendering was not followed.

  • The planned objective of preparing a valid and error-free NRC was not met despite excess.

Recommendations made by the CAG

●        CAG report suggested Penal measures for violating the provisions of the Minimum Wages Act and for paying data operators less than minimum wages.

●        The report recommended action against the State Coordinator of National Registration (SCNR) for “excess, irregular and inadmissible payments”.

Must Read: https://www.iasgyan.in/daily-current-affairs/comptroller-and-auditor-general-cag

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