The exercise to update the National Population Register (NPR) and the first phase of the Census 2021 will not be held as scheduled due to the 21-day lockdown announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, officials said on Tuesday.
Both the NPR and the Census were scheduled to be carried out from April 1 to September 30.
Due to the prevailing situation, the NPR and Census exercises have been deferred till further orders, a senior home ministry official said.
The Prime Minister has announced a 21-day lockdown across the country from Tuesday night due to the outbreak of the coronavirus.
Until recently, India had witnessed scores of protests over the NPR, National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the Citizenship Amendment Act.
The NPR is a register of all usual residents of the country. It aims to create a comprehensive identity database with demographic as well as biometric particulars.The NPR exercise was first carried out 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. Three new questions have been added to the NPR questionnaire - an individual’s mother tongue, parents’ place of birth and details of Aadhaar card.
Critics allege that the NPR is a precursor to the proposed nationwide NRC, which will be a pan-India version of the Assam NRC. The NRC in Assam saw more than 40 lakh people excluded from the final draft.
Several states including Kerala, Telangana, Rajasthan, Punjab and West Bengal have passed resolutions in their Assemblies against CAA, NRC and NPR. BJP’s ally the AIADMK in Tamil Nadu had on March 12 put on hold the National Population Register until the Centre replied to its question. The Edappadi Palaniswami-led Tamil Nadu government had sought the Centre’s response on whether certain questions could be avoided in the NPR, including mother tongue, place and date of birth of parents. The Andhra government had also decided to go with the 2010 questionnaire of the NPR, citing insecurities among minorities over the new format.