From Amit Shah, an appeal to Mamata Banerjee and Pinarayi Vijayan on NPR

Home Minister Amit Shah’s statement follows announcements by chief ministers of West Bengal and Kerala to pull out of the NPR exercise

There is no link between National Register of Citizens (NRC) and National Population Register (NPR), Home Minister Amit Shah said on Tuesday hours after the Union Cabinet cleared the digital register, a comprehensive identity database of all those living in India.

Home Minister Amit Shah’s request to state governments comes against the backdrop of calls by some opposition parties to not go along with the centre to update the data.

Shah’s statement in an interview with news agency ANI comes amid announcements by chief ministers of West Bengal and Kerala to pull back from the exercise to collect data for the NPR. It is a decision that has been supported by Asaduddin Owaisi of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen.

“My simple request to the two chief ministers is to reconsider this decision,” Shah told the news agency, insisting that their decision would hurt the poor who benefit from government schemes.

The home minister also said he would reach out to the two chief ministers and others if need to persuade them. “I humbly appeal to both Chief Ministers again, that don’t take such a step and please review you decisions. Don’t keep the poor out of development programmes just for your politics,” he told ANI.

ALSO WATCH | ‘NPR has nothing to do with NRC’, Govt gives nod for Population Register

“This population register is going to be the foundation of the development activities that are carried out,” he said.

Responding to a question on Owaisi asserting that the population register was effectively an NRC with a different name, Shah said the AIMIM leader always opposes whatever the BJP says.

“If we say the Sun rises in the east, he will say west. This is his stand. But I assure Owaisi ji also that this (NPR) has nothing to do with the NRC,” he said.

Shah said NPR was not even in the BJP’s manifesto but the government was just continuing “a good exercise” that was started by the Congress.

The home minister’s clarification on ANI came two days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi told a rally in Delhi that his government hadn’t discussed NRC, a verified digital register of citizens, in Parliament or the Cabinet.

Union minister Prakash Javadekar echoed the prime minister at a news briefing on the cabinet decisions including one to authorise spending over Rs 3,940 crore to update the National Population Register.

Incidentally, the government told the Centre back in 2014 that the government decided to create the National Register of Indian Citizens based on the information collected under the scheme of National Population Register (NPR) by verifying the citizenship status of all individuals in the country. “The proposals for sanction of expenditure are under formulation,” then junior home minister Kiren Rijiju told the Lok Sabha.