How Assam Government establishes Digital Database

Bohniman Systems helped to form legacy database for the government under the National Population Register. There were 2 crore names in the database which were handwritten in the old papers.

Assam has been facing the problem of illegal migrants from Bangladesh for a very long time. So it became important to curb this problem. The government wanted to identify the citizens of India to stop illegal migrants from coming into India. To tackle this problem, the government began the National Register of Citizen (NRC). Hence it became imperative on the part of citizens of India in Assam to ensure inclusion of his/her name in the updated NRC (National Register of Citizen). The NRC is the register containing details of all Indian citizens. It is believed that it is the only way to stop illegal immigrants.

The first NRC was prepared in 1951, by recording details of people included in that year’s Census. It is being updated only in Assam, to comply with Assam Accord which was signed in 1985 by Rajiv Gandhi and leaders of Assam movement against migrants from Bangladesh.To apply for inclusion in the NRC, one’s name or ancestor’s name must be there in the 1951 NRC or in any voter list up to the midnight of March 24, 1971. If the applicant’s name is not on any of these lists, he can produce any of the 12 other documents including land records, refugee registration certificate, birth certificate, and educational
certificate, passport, etc.

Moreover, as per Section 6A of the Citizenship Act, 1955 those who came from Bangladesh between 1966 and 1971 will have to register themselves with the Foreigners Regional Registration Officer, and will be included in the NRC, but will not have voting rights for 10 years from the
date of registration.

Section 6A and Section 3 of the Act, which provides citizenship by birth in contravention of the Assam Accord have been challenged in the Supreme Court. People who have been declared doubtful voters can also apply but their names will be included only after being cleared by the Foreigners Tribunal.

Bohniman Systems helps Government in making NRC Digitalized

Bohniman Systems company was started in 2005. The company helped form legacy database for the government. There were 2 crore names in the database which was handwritten in the old papers. “We scanned all these papers through different sources and built a database. NRC is a hand written national register database which is created in a fixed format. In that printed format, village to village people have handwritten family wise name. All these documents were classified which was handed to us after the contract we got from government. We digitalized all the names and made it available in a searchable form. If a person searches his name or his ancestor’s name online, then he/she can get original image on the screen” said Abhijit Bhuyan, Managing Director - Bohniman Systems.

Challenges faced by the company (in terms of technology and execution) to complete the NRC project

According to Bhuyan, the biggest challenge was that therewas no prior example that our company could follow. We had to innovate and implement it in a best way possible. First hurdle was to conceptualize the view that will bring the solutions. We used digital technologies to execute this vast product.

Firstly, the 6.3 Lakh legacy images (The Electoral Roll between 1951 and 1971 and Hand written NRC of 1951) which were in the custody of respective district administration had to be scanned with photo scanner as the documents were very old and fragile. All these records were in vernacular language in origin. As most of the current generation only knows English these records had to be transliterated to English after digitization which was done through program.

As the exact spelling of most of ancestor’s name written was not known to the current generation it was required to make the search available on phonetic based search so as to make all similar sounding names available during search. Most of the people migrated from their original place and all 2 Cr legacy record had to be searched for most of the users and it put lot of pressure on the database and search engine.

In total 17cr hits were handled online within 6 months’ time and 24X7 monitoring were required and the portal was up and running without a single moment break down. Similarly 1.4 Cr legacy record were delivered to applicants. Currently there are 68 Lakh household in Assam, so in an
average every family got 2 legacy codes.

“As legacy code had to be delivered to people and physical distribution of legacy data from original documents could have been a disaster. Just imagine 3.3 cr people go to district head quarter looking for records of their ancestors between 1951 and 1971 within few months’ time. But a searchable database which delivered 1.4 cr records to over 95% households of Assam within 6 month made it possible for the progress of the current NRC” he added.

Company’s other Government projects

The company has been working on different projects for the government, apart from NRC. They have appointed 35,000 teachers in 2012, 11000 in 2013, 7,000 in 2016 through online application and preparing of merit list and place of posting for Education Department.

The company claims to have 8 successful years of developing and maintaining Online billing System for Assam Power Development Company Limited including payment gateway, Arunachal Pradesh Online Inner Line Permit management system, Generation of pre-paid meter web based vend code generation for Meghalaya Energy Corporation Limited and MIS system for ARIAS Society under World Bank Funded Project.

The company also claims to have 3 successful years of conduction of TET examination for Govt. of Arunachal Pradesh. And many other projects like MIS for fishery Department, Govt of Assam, PIS for Assam Police, Govt of Assam, GIS based Asset Mapping and Consumer survey for Assam Power Development Company Limited for 7 major towns, GIS based Asset Mapping and Consumer survey for Assam Power Development Company Limited for 7 major towns, Digi-Sign Invoice generation for Numaligarh Refinary Limited which is saving 100+ trees every year.

Bohniman Systems have various government key customers such as National Register of Citizens, Assam, Education Department, Govt. of Assam, World Bank funded Arias Society, IT Department, Govt. of Arunachal Pradesh and Sarba Siksha Abhijan, Assam. Bhuyan concluded by saying that we are building systems and will acquire CMMi level 3 within next 3 months. We are already ISO 27001:2013 Company and also will be acquiring ISO 9001 next month. We are the first company from North East to have ISO 27001 and going to have CMMi level 3.

We have employed over 100 software developer in Guwahati and the largest software company in North East and serving successfully the remote areas of North East India. We plan to be among the top 5 Innovative IT companies in India.