Come April 2020, the exercise for the nationwide National Population Register (NPR) is set to begin. However, the exercise has faced immense opposition in India, especially when viewed in combination with the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC).
The NPR, once published, will be the basis for preparing the National Register of Indian Citizens by verifying the citizenship status of each and every resident. NRIC will be the pan-India version of the Assam NRC, which had created a massive controversy after 40.7 lakh people were excluded from it.
Three new questions have been added to the NPR, which will now require details about an individual’s mother tongue, their parents’ place of birth and the details of their parents’ Aadhaar card as well. Two Chief Ministers, Kerala’s Pinarayi Vijayan and West Bengal’s Mamata Banerjee, have stated that NPR work will not be carried out in their state. Meanwhile, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edapaddi Palaniswami stated that while an official resolution is unlikely, those who do not wish to answer certain questions can avoid doing so.
TNM reached out to Census officials to ask whether citizens can opt out of adding data in the questionnaire. The official stated that while the questionnaire has three new questions, none of the questions are mandatory. “If someone does not know the information, that response can be left blank. Nobody can force you to add that information and nobody can force you to furnish any documents about the same. The questions are not mandatory and information will be given voluntarily,” the official added.
Last month, the Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai had in written replies in Lok Sabha stated that an individual’s Aadhaar number will be collected voluntarily. He added that during the exercise, verification will be done to find individuals whose citizenship is doubtful. “The respondent has to provide information for NPR updation true to the best of his knowledge and belief,” the minister had said, adding that the government has not taken any decision to prepare National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC) at the national level.
The NPR a register of all usual residents of the country and aims to create a comprehensive identity database with demographic as well as biometric particulars. The National Population Register (NPR) was prepared in 2010 under the provisions of the Citizenship Act, 1955 and Citizenship Rules, 2003, which was subsequently updated in 2015 by seeding it with Aadhaar.