No salaries for 3 months for people engaged by Wipro for NRC

The salaries of data entry operators hired by IT major Wipro for updating the National Register of Citizens have not been paid for the last three months, the Assam Legislative Assembly was informed today.
"The remuneration payable to data entry operators engaged by Wipro has not been paid for the month of November, December 2016 and January 2017," state Parliamentary Affairs minister Chandra Mohan Patowary said in the Assembly.
Patowary gave a written reply to a query by AIUDF MLA Aminul Islam on behalf of Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal, who is also the in-charge of the Implementation of Assam Accord Department.

Patowary, however, did not elaborate on how many employees are engaged at present by the outsourced firm Wipro for NRC work or by when the salaries are expected to be paid.
On when the update of NRC is likely to be done, he said "The Supreme Court, the RGI and the Ministry of Home Affairs shall decide upon the date of completion of NRC on time."
Without giving any number, he said all government employees engaged in the NRC work will be released from their current responsibilities to join their parent departments only after completion of NRC works.

The Minister told the House that out of the 6.14 crore documents received during the NRC update process, office verification of 5.73 crore papers have been completed.

He said "4.18 lakh documents have been sent to different states for inter-state verification, out of which result of only 73,183 documents have been received so far."
Similarly, out of 402 documents sent to the Ministry of External Affairs for inter-country verification through Indian Embassies and High Commissions, results of only 47 have been received so far, Patowary said.
He said field verification work of all the 68.21 lakh application forms have been completed.
In a separate question by Congress MLA Kamalakhya Dey Purkayastha, Patowary said a total of 273 persons have been arrested from 31 districts for submitting fake documents for inclusion of names in the NRC.

Replying to another query by Congress member Abdul Khaleque, the Minister informed the Assembly that a total of 2,31,657 persons have been marked as 'D' voters since 1998.
"Out of that, 74,691 cases have been disposed off till October 2016 by the Foreigners Tribunals. Of these, 62,385 have been declared Indian and 12,306 have been identified as foreigners," Patowary added.