Pranab Mukherjee Awarded Bharat Ratna for Visiting RSS Headquarters, Says JD(S) Leader

New Delhi, Feb 12: The Centre on Wednesday said the NRC data in Assam is safe even though some technical issues were visible and that will be resolved soon.

The Union Home Ministry clarification came in view of reports that data of the final list of the National Register of Citizens has been made offline from its official website.

"The NRC data is safe. Some technical issues are in visibility on cloud. These are being resolved soon," a home ministry spokesperson said.

The data was not available for a couple of days and it created panic in the public, mostly among the people excluded from the list as the rejection certificates were yet to be issued.

NRC State Coordinator Hitesh Dev Sarma accepted that the data has been made offline, but refuted the allegation of any "malafide" intent in it.

The cloud service for the huge set of data was provided by IT firm Wipro and their contract was till October 19 last year. However, this was not renewed by the previous coordinator.

So, the data got offline from December 15 after it was suspended by Wipro, Sarma said.

He said the state coordination committee had decided to do necessary formalities in its meeting on January 30 and wrote to the Wipro during the first week of February.

"Once Wipro makes the data live, it will be available for public. We hope people will be able to access it in the next 2-3 days," Sarma said.

The complete detail of exclusion and inclusion of bonafide Indian citizens in the NRC was uploaded on its official website http://www.nrcassam.nic.in after the final list was published on August 31, 2019.

The final NRC was published by excluding 19,06,657 persons. A total of 3,11,21,004 names were included out of 3,30,27,661 applicants.

After the earlier NRC State Coordinator Prateek Hajela relinquished the charge on November 11 following his transfer to home state Madhya Pradesh on a direction from the Supreme Court, Sarma was appointed in his place on November 9.

London, Jul 10: India's Reliance will load its first cargo of Venezuelan crude in three months this week in exchange for diesel under a swap deal the parties say is permitted under the US sanctions regime on the Latin American country, according to a Reliance source and a shipping document from state oil firm PDVSA.

Washington has exempted some Venezuelan oil trade from sanctions when transactions are in exchange for fuel and food or to repay debts rather than for cash. But that trade slowed as the US tightened restrictions and refiners, shippers and insurers have been steering clear of Venezuela to avoid any risk they may fall foul of sanctions.

Washington aims to deprive Venezuelan socialist President Nicolas Maduro of his main source of revenue with the sanctions, which have driven Venezuelan oil exports to their lowest level since the 1940s.

Reliance gave the US State Department and the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) notice of the diesel swap and received word back that the policies that allowed the transaction were still in place, the Reliance source told Reuters.

Reliance has previously said that its supplies of fuel to PDVSA in exchange for crude were permitted under sanctions.

An oil tanker named Commodore would load the cargo of crude in Venezuela and ship it to India, the tanker's manager NGM Energy said.

"All details of the transaction and transportation were shared with US authorities, who confirmed that the U.S. policy authorizing such transactions remained in place," NGM Energy said in a statement to Reuters.

"The shipment is made in connection with the humanitarian exchange of oil for diesel fuel."

The Commodore is loading a 1.9-million barrel cargo of crude for Reliance at Venezuela's main oil port of Jose, according to an internal PDVSA cargo schedule seen by Reuters.

The Liberian-flagged Commodore was at the Jose Terminal on Thursday, ship tracking data on Refinitiv Eikon showed.

The US State Department, Treasury's enforcement arm OFAC, and PDVSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Reliance has a swap deal to provide diesel to Venezuela in exchange for fuel but has not received a cargo of crude since April. Sources at Indian refiners told Reuters earlier this year they planned to wind down their purchases of Venezuelan oil to avoid any problems with supply due to sanctions.

Other long-time customers of PDVSA, including Italy's Eni and Spain's Repsol, have continued taking cargoes of Venezuelan crude this year under permission granted by the US Treasury Department to exchange the oil for diesel supply as part of debt repayment deals, according to sources from the companies.

NGM Energy also manages the Voyager I tanker, which the United States removed from its list of sanctioned vessels last week after NGM and the ship's owner Sanibel Shiptrade said they would increase measures to ensure vessels complied with international sanctions.

"Last month, NGM Energy SA adopted a firm policy of not allowing vessels under its commercial management to trade to Venezuela, or to carry Venezuelan petroleum cargoes, absent US government authorization," NGM said.

"NGM continues to stand by that pledge."

Shirdi, Jan 18: The administrative body of Sai Baba's Samadhi calls for the indefinite closure of the Shirdi temple after Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray reportedly said Pathri in Parbhani is Sai Baba's birthplace.

"We have announced to close Shirdi against rumours from January 19," said B Wakchaure of Saibaba Sansthan Trust.

"A meeting of villagers will be convened Saturday evening to discuss the issue. Devotees will not face any difficulty if they come to Shirdi," Mr Wakchaure added.