Barring West Bengal and Kerala, all states have reissued notifications for the exercise to update National Population Register (NPR) and communicated the same to the Centre, two officials aware of the matter said on Wednesday. The two states have asked for a “temporary hold” on the exercise while others including Congress-ruled states of Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Chhattisgarh have agreed to conduct the exercise, they added.
The officials cited above said West Bengal and Kerala had earlier notified they would participate in the exercise, but they backtracked after the passage of the controversial Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) last month that has triggered protests across the country. Kerala moved the Supreme Court on Tuesday saying the CAA violates the Constitution’s secular nature.
The opponents of the CAA, which seeks to fast-track the citizenship process for non-Muslims who have entered India from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh before 2015, insist it is discriminatory and unconstitutional as it leaves out the Muslims and links faith to citizenship in a secular country. They say it could result in the expulsion or detentions of the Muslims unable to provide the documentation if the law is seen in the context of a proposed pan-India National Register of Citizens (NRC). An exercise carried out in Assam to identify undocumented immigrants led to the exclusion of around 2 million people from the NRC last year
The government has in the past described NPR, which is a comprehensive biometric database of all “usual residents” in India as opposed to the Census or a database of households, as the first step towards a nationwide NRC. It now maintains that there is no link between the two and that an all-India NRC is not immediately on the anvil.
{{/usCountry}}The government has in the past described NPR, which is a comprehensive biometric database of all “usual residents” in India as opposed to the Census or a database of households, as the first step towards a nationwide NRC. It now maintains that there is no link between the two and that an all-India NRC is not immediately on the anvil.
{{/usCountry}}The NPR has generated controversy with the Opposition parties contending the exercise is linked to the National Register for Indian Citizens (NRIC) aimed at identifying undocumented immigrants.
“We have been informed through our state Census commissioners that both states [Kerala and West Bengal] have asked for a temporary hold. We are hoping that the situation will be resolved soon,” one of the officials cited above said on condition of anonymity. “No other state has informed us about any reservation...”
The NPR database will be updated between April 1 and September 30 along with the house listing phase of Census 2021.
Declaration of mother tongue, sharing parents names, their dates of birth and birthplace are to be declared in NPR if they are living in the same household, the officials said. If the parents are living separately, their enumeration will happen separately. “There are concerns around sharing parents’ birthplaces which may be reviewed before the final exercise is rolled out,” the second official said.
HT on Monday reported language information may be sought under NPR is for the first time even as this information was previously collected under the Census exercise. NPR was created in 2010 and updated in 2015. On both occasions, officials said, data on mother tongue was not collected under the exercise. In addition to the mother tongue, NPR 2020 will also seek information on the place and date of birth of a resident’s parents, apart from nationality. The section on mother tongue is not in the NPR 2020 form, but the NPR manual prepared to train enumerators has a separate section called, “Code for Mother Tongue”.