Amid NRC conundrum, Centre flags off National Population Register

New Delhi: Amid nationwide agitation against the Citizenship Act and NRC, the Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Tuesday, approved the updation of National Population Register (NPR) at a cost of Rs 3,941.35 crore, and a proposal for conducting Census of India 2021, at a cost of Rs 8,754.23 crore. The entire exercise is expected to commence from April 2020.

The NPR is slated to be updated along with House listing and Housing Census which will cover the entire population of the country while NPR will also cover all the population except in the state of Assam. The exercise of NPR will require the people to declare 'date and place of birth of parents' and also furnish data on 21 points. Moreover, for the first time, 'Mobile App' will be used for the collection of the data.

Clearing the confusion between and NPR and NRC, Union Home Minister, Amit Shah, on Tuesday said: "There is no link between National Register of Citizens (NRC) and National Population Register (NPR), I am clearly stating this today."

For updating NPR, the government will collect details of the last place of residence, Permanent Account Number, Aadhar (voluntarily), Voter ID card number, Driving License number and mobile numbers from the citizens. However, during the previous NPR exercise conducted in 2010, the aforementioned data were not collected. It was updated later in 2015 by conducting a door-to-door survey.

According to the Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, notified on December 10, 2003, a Population Register is 'the register containing the details of persons usually residing in a village or rural area or town or ward or demarcated area (demarcated by the Registrar General of Citizen Registration) within a ward in a town or urban area.

Moreover, elucidating on the developments, at a media briefing in Delhi on Tuesday, Union Minister Prakash Javadekar, said that no documents or biometrics would be taken during the National Population register process. He added: "Whatever people will say will be accepted."

By linking the NPR with the registration of birth and death, real-time population register will be available leading to the register-based census in future, home ministry officials said.

The NPR data can be used for transparent and efficient delivery of social benefits by linking it with various beneficiary oriented government schemes, they said.

The benefits could be obtained in banking, insurance services, admission in school, colleges and hostels, scholarship, distribution of seed, fertiliser, pesticide, marketing credit, registration of land, property, shares, health and medical services, public distribution system, gender issues, child marriage, marital status, maintenance of separated women.

The government will get data on employment, disaster management, disability, old age pension, freedom fighter.

Earlier, the Bengal government became the first to hold up the exercise of updating NRP, following which the CPI(M)-led Kerela government had also made their stance clear and had held up the process of NRP updation. Congress, All India Trinamool Congress and CPI(M) have also protested against the implementation of NRC and citizenship Act demanding an immediate withdrawal of the law.