The Andhra Pradesh government will pass a resolution in the state assembly requesting the Centre to exclude the new contentious questions added to the questionnaire of the National Population Register (NPR).
Chief minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy on Tuesday indicated the decision in a tweet, saying some of the questions proposed in NPR—a biometric register of residents in India the exercise for which will begin on April 1—were causing insecurity among the state’s minorities.
“After elaborate consultations within our party, we have decided to request the Central government to revert the conditions to those prevailing in 2010. To this effect, we will also introduce a resolution in the upcoming assembly session,” the chief minister tweeted.
The announcement came after Jagan held a meeting with a delegation of Muslim representations at his camp office at Tadepalli in the afternoon. The representatives expressed concern over the questions which will be asked as part of NPR during census work.
{{/usCountry}}The announcement came after Jagan held a meeting with a delegation of Muslim representations at his camp office at Tadepalli in the afternoon. The representatives expressed concern over the questions which will be asked as part of NPR during census work.
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Last month, lawmakers in NDA-ruled Bihar resolved against implementing a National Register of Citizens (NRC) and decided to only go along with NPR on the condition that the Union home ministry doesn’t use the new contentious questions.
With that resolution, Bihar became the first NDA-ruled state to pass a resolution against the proposed NRC. Nitish Kumar-led Janata Dal(United) is in power in partnership with the Bharatiya Janata Party in the eastern state.
NPR, a comprehensive biometric database of all “usual residents” in India, was created in 2010 and was subsequently updated in 2015. The register is again being updated for 2021.
As the Union home ministry set out to update the database later this year, it added questions about the respondent’s mother tongue and the place and date of birth of the respondent’s parents.
These additional questions were viewed suspiciously by opposition parties, particularly against the backdrop of the government’s announcement earlier about rolling out the NRC.
However, the Centre has insisted that there had been no decision yet on NRC as a huge row erupted over amendments that introduced a religion test to citizenship for people from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.
Opposition parties have said this declaration does not imply that the government won’t go for NRC in the future.
The Telangana government, too, has decided to put on hold the NPR exercise and move a resolution in the legislative assembly during the ensuing budget session, urging the Centre to implement the old format of NPR, instead of the revised one proposed for 2020 Census.
Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao also announced that a resolution against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) would also be passed in the state assembly during the budget session beginning March 6.
Both the decisions are expected to reflect in the speech of Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan in her joint address to the legislative assembly and council on the first day of the session.
The Congress, Trinamool Congress, Biju Janata Dal (BJD), JD(U), CPI(M), Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), TRS and YSRCP — have opposed a nationwide NRC.