by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group
Govt. puts NRC on hold, at least for now
Says NPR not linked to NRC
Amit Shah also breaks his silence
New Delhi, December 24
The Modi government seems to put the exercise of creating a National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC), popularly known as NRC, on the back-burner. In the aftermath of wide-spread protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 the government had already gone on the backfoot on creating a NRC. It clearly said that the National Population Register (NPR) had nothing to do with the NRC.
Today, Union Home Minister Amit Shah came out of the shell on the issue and declared that NPR cannot be the basis of the NRC. He said that NRC is completely separate exercise while NPR is only for population count in the country so that the government formulate its policy for the welfare of the people. He gave a series of examples as to how NPR would be in the interest of the people.
Amit Shah was at pains to explain in an interview to a TV channel today that the first NPR was conducted under the UPA regime in 2010 and the NDA government is conducting the second NPR.
He also explained that NPR data is a separate exercise while for NRC will be completely different and NPR data cannot be made base of NRC.
Even Information & Broadcasting Minister Parkash Javadekar had a tough time today to explain why NPR is being conducted. He was briefing the media persons post Cabinet meeting and replied to spate of questions on the NPR.
Javadekar also took shelter under the fact that the first NPR was conducted under the UPA government in 2010 and his government was not doing anything new.
There is no denial the fact that the first NPR exercise was created in the couuntry when P Chidambaram was Union Home Minister in 2010-11. Along with the Census operations, the UPA government also undertook NPR exercise across the country. Since the Aadhaar, a new brainchild of the UPA government, had emerged on the scene, the NPR exercise did not get any prominence and took a back seat. Javadekar did not tell is that the Modi government, through a special notification on June 25, 2015 updated the NPR prepared during the UPA era. The updated NPR has not been loaded on the website of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner of India (RGCCI) till now.
Reason being that the Modi government re-ordered up-dation of the NPR data across the country through a special gazette notification in July 2015. Thus, technically, this will be the third NPR in the country.
It may also be mentioned here that the RGCCI has also been entrusted with the task of preparing the NRC data and identify non-Indian citizens.
Ends
