Prateek Hajela

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State Coordinator, NRC, Assam

Prateek Hajela is a 1995 batch IAS officer of Assam Meghalaya Cadre. He is best known as the State Coordinator, NRC, Assam, the position which brought him to limelight though he has served in various positions in Assam. Although an IAS officer of Government of Assam, while working for NRC update, Prateek Hajela reported and took orders only from the Supreme Court, thereby neither to State Government nor the Union Government. This started with the order of the Supreme Court dated 23 September 2014 which required him to submit a report in sealed cover on the measures to be taken for update of NRC. Extract of the SC Order dated 23 September 2014 is given below:

“…Having regard to the nature of the work that is involved in the process of upgrading the NRC, we direct the State Coordinator to submit a report to the Court in a sealed cover indicating the further steps and measures that are required to be taken in his considered view to facilitate the work in question and also the difficulties, if any, that he anticipates in the smooth execution of the work of updating the NRC. The above information will be laid before the Court by the State Coordinator without any consultation with any Authority whatsoever and without reverting to the State Government or any Authority in the Union Government. Needless to say, the information that would be laid before the Court by the State Coordinator will remain absolutely confidential and may serve as additional inputs/materials in assisting the Court, as may be required, from time to time…”.

The fact that the said report was required to be submitted without consultation with any authority whatsoever including the State or Union government had made it clear that the NRC update process will happen under Supreme Court control, and that control over State Coordinator, Prateek Hajela shall rest with the Supreme Court.

Subsequent order of the Supreme Court dated 13 July 2017 taking exception to a statement made by Assam Chief Minister, Sarbananda Sonowal on NRC matters, treating it as an instance of interference on NRC matters, the Court ordered State Coordinator, Mr Prateek Hajela to report to the Court forthwith any such order of interference. Extract of the Supreme Court order dated 13 July 2017 is given below –

"...We have perused the report submitted by Shri Prateek Hajela, learned State Coordinator for National Registration (NRC) and Commissioner & Secretary, Home & Political, Government of Assam dated 12th July, 2017. The learned State Coordinator though had submitted before the Court at one point of time that the date of publication of the draft NRC would be sometime around 31st March, 2018 has now stated in his report to the Court that the draft NRC will be published on 31^st December, 2017. We wonder whether the stand taken by the learned State Coordinator is pursuant to the statement made by the Hon'ble Chief Minister of the State of Assam that the draft NRC would be published on or before 31st December, 2017. We do not appreciate why any other authority is intervening in the matter of preparation and publication of the draft NRC when this Court has been in seisin of the matter for a fairly long time and has been monitoring the process...Any difficulty(ies) that the learned State Coordinator may encounter in the process including intervention(s) by any other authority(ies) will be reported forthwith to this Court for appropriate orders…”.

Further, in the order of 19 September 2018, the Court ordered Mr Prateek Hajela not to share any NRC related information with any Executive, Legislative or Judicial Authority of the State without leave of the Court. Extract of the Order dated 19 September 2018 is given below –

“…In the meantime, we direct Shri Hajela not to share any information pertaining to the ongoing exercise of updation of the NRC with any Executive, Legislative or Judicial Authority of the State without leave of the Court…”.

As the process of NRC update in Assam was unprecedented as no successful effort had happened earlier, the visualization and designing of the process was a very difficult task. Further, the process of NRC update in Assam was extremely complex as compared to other parts of India where it is a relatively simple exercise and to be carried out through house to house enumeration; whereas the exercise for Assam is application based requiring submission of evidentiary proof of residence in India before 24^th March (midnight) of 1971. Conceptualization, designing and implementation of the NRC update process of Assam was done in entirety by State Coordinator, Prateek Hajela.

Some of the game changing designs of Prateek Hajela which made this unprecedented and complex task of NRC Updation in reality are –

1. Designing of Legacy Data and publication through an online search portal

2. Family tree system of verification

3. Comprehensive support of Quality Checking, state of the art system for verification of authenticity of documents through Issuing Offices

4. Designing system of verification of around 60 million documents by comparison with the back-end available with the respective Issuing Authorities

His report of 4^th October 2018 to the Supreme Court on the matter of number of documents to be relied upon by applicants for submission of claim submission is an illuminating document on the matter of illegal migrants using various means of getting legalized in India. While mentioning this report in his maiden book “No Land’s People”, Mr Abhishek Saha writes “I consider this report to be Hajela’s magnum opus, with its passionate dissection of the intricacies of the exercise. What Hajela thought of his baby is best reflected here. Posterity would do well to judge Hajela and his NRC based on this report.” The book “No Land’s People” was first published in India by HarperCollins Publishers in 2021, A-75, Sector 57, Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201301, India.

BIO-DATA: Prateek Hajela, IAS

Prateek Hajela, IAS, is native of Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, though his parents are originally from Allahabad, UP. Uncle Dr Prayag Das Hajela (Father’s Elder Brother) was a renowned Economist and served as Vice Chancellor of prestigious Allahabad University around 1978 and later Sagar University in MP. His father S P Hajela, retired from M P Govt Service. Mother – Late Mahima Hajela was a Housewife. His elder brother Dr Anoop Hajela is a famous doctor in Bhopal. Prateek Hajela is married to Priya and they have a 14-year-old daughter Arzoo Hajela.

Education and Career

Prateek Hajela had his schooling from Campion School, Bhopal, after which he moved in to do B Tech in Electronics from IIT Delhi. Before entering IIT, Delhi, he studied briefly in Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology (MANIT), Bhopal which was then known as Maulana Azad College of Technology (MACT).

Prateek Hajela joined IAS in 1995, and is borne out of Assam Meghalaya Cadre.

Postings and assignments held so far

POSTING	LOCATION	TENURE
Assistant Commissioner	Cachar, Silchar	July 1996 to August 1997
SDO (Civil)	Rangia	September 1997 to April 1999
Staff Officer to Chief Secretary	Guwahati	May, 1999 to July, 2001
Deputy Commissioner	Nagaon	July, 2001 to October, 2005
Deputy Commissioner	Goalpara	October 2005 to September 2006
Mission Director (MD), Sarba Shiksha Abhijan (SSA)	Guwahati	September 2006 to November 2007
Secretary, National Games Organising Committee, (Member Secretary, Committees on Media & Publicity, Communications, Opening & Closing Ceremonies)	Guwahati	October 2006 to February 2007
Deputy Commissioner	Kamrup Metropolitan, Guwahati	November 2007 to November 2010
Project Director, JIC Water Supply Project	Guwahati	January 2011 to June 2012
Commissioner & Secretary, Health & Family Welfare	Guwahati	November 2010 to September 2013
Mission Director (MD), National Rural Health Mission (NRHM)	Guwahati	September 2011 to September 2013
Commissioner & Secretary, Home & Political and State Coordinator	Guwahati	September 2013 to April 2018
Principal Secretary, Home & Political and State Coordinator	Guwahati	May 2018 till November, 2019
Commissioner, Health, Government of Madhya Pradesh	Bhopal	November, 2019 to December, 2019
Commissioner, Health, and OSD in the rank of Principal Secretary, Government of Madhya Pradesh	Bhopal	January, 2020 to March, 2020
Principal Secretary, Social Justice & Disabled Persons Welfare, Government of Madhya Pradesh	Bhopal	May, 2020 to March, 2023
Principal Secretary, AYUSH, Government of Madhya Pradesh (additional charge)	Bhopal	September, 2020 to January, 2021
Principal Secretary, AYUSH, Government of Madhya Pradesh (additional charge)	Bhopal	July, 2022 to March, 2023
Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Atal Bihari Institute of Good Governance & Policy Analysis (AIGGPA) (additional charge)	Bhopal	November, 2022 to March, 2023

Special Responsibilities & Awards

1. While still remaining as Commissioner & Secretary, Health & Family Welfare, he was also appointed as Special Commissioner for Emergency Relief in July 2014 when sudden floods broke out in Guwahati city.
2. While posted as Commissioner & Secretary, Home & Political, he was awarded Chief Minister’s Award for Transparency while recruiting 5000 Police Constables in 2014

His role as SCNR, Assam

Prateek Hajela, IAS, was appointed as State Coordinator, NRC in September 2013 subsequent to which he worked in his capacity as the head of this project implemented under the Supreme Court of India. Prateek Hajela represented himself in the Supreme Court for the NRC case without any Advocate including drafting Court Reports. Prateek Hajela designed the processes of all phases of NRC Update and ensured its implementation across the state by district, circle and level functionaries. With designing and deployment of unique IT interventions the State Coordinator made this unusual and unprecedented exercise a reality. NRC Assam is a paradigm shift in e-Governance scene in Assam and have a set of best practices to share on data collection, verification and creation of databases. Prateek Hajela focussed on designing intelligent and efficient use of sophisticated technological platforms with easy to use interfaces for designing and development of databases. NRC Update process has therefore been technologically driven, transparent and objective.

Completion of NRC Update was for a very long considered an impossible task. Mr Prateek Hajela completed the Supreme Court assigned task of publication of the Final NRC on 31st August, 2019. “The Telegraph” reported this in it’s online edition at on 31st August, 2019 with the headline “Four-year NRC process: Prateek Hajela pulls off the ‘impossible’, silently.”  Mr Mrinal Talukdar in his book called “The Game Called NRC” also referred to it as “But even his biggest detractors would admit that what Hajela had done was considered a task that was next to impossible.”. Mr Mrinal Talukdar however had said this after publication of the Draft NRC on 30th July, 2018. The Final NRC was yet to be published which happened a year later on 31st August, 2019. The book “The Game called NRC” was published by Nanda Talukdar Foundation www.nandatalukdafoundation.org in September, 2020.

Thereafter, the Supreme Court of India in their order dated 18th October, 2019 ordered for “….the inter-cadre transfer of Mr. Hajela to the State of Madhya Pradesh on deputation for the maximum period permissible…”. The Times of India while reporting online the same day the Supreme Court order read “Attorney general K K Venugopal asked SC bench of CJI Gogoi and Justices S A Bode and R F Nariman whether there was any cause or reason for sending Hajela on deputation. CJI Gogoi said: "Can any order be passed without cause or reason?" However, the CJI did not mention the cause or reason leading to speculation that Hajela possibly received threat to his life. Hajela had overseen the mammoth exercise of finalisation and publication of Assam NRC.” The reasons for Inter-Cadre deputation of Mr Prateek Hajela continued to remain a matter of conjecture as the Supreme Court had not mentioned the reasons in their order. However, the real reason became clear about two years later when the autobiography of Mr Ranjan Gogoi was published on December, 2021. In his autobiography named “Justice for the Judge”, in chapter 11 called “NRC: A Document for the future” the retired Chief Justice of India wrote “At the local level, personal attacks on the SCNR and veiled attacks on the judges, particularly me, by local politicians and specifically by Abhijit Sharma, the president of Assam Public Works (petitioner in W.P(C) No.274 of 2009) left us (the Bench) convinced that orders should be passed to protect Hajela from undue harassment and calculated harm. The Bench passed the order dated 18 October 2019 for his deputation on inter-cadre transfer to Madhya Pradesh, his home state. Subsequent events like filing of FIRs against Hajela and other NRC officials; allegations of corruption and threats to order CBI probes besides enormous misinformation to the media and wide publicity thereof leave me convinced that the Bench was thoroughly justified in passing the rather unusual order for the inter-cadre transfer of Hajela by invoking Article 142 of the Constitution.” Thus it was revealed that the Supreme Court had ordered for inter-cadre deputation of Mr Prateek Hajela under Article 142 of the Constitution of India. And that this was done to provide protection to him for having worked sincerely towards the Constitution of India. The book “Justice for the Judge” has been published by Rupa Publications India Pvt. Ltd 2021 7/16, Ansari Road, Daryaganj New Delhi 110002.

External links

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