Senior Congress leader P. Chidambaram has alleged that the National Population Register (NPR) approved by the BJP government was different and dangerous in terms of the “text and context” of the data collection done in 2010.
The BJP government, he said on Thursday, had a “sinister agenda”, alluding to the government’s move to cite the 2010 initiative of the Congress-led UPA as a way to hard sell the idea.
If the BJP's motives were bonafide, he said, the government should unconditionally state that they supported the NPR form and design of 2010 and do not intend to link it to the controversial NRC.
“The BJP-led government has a larger and more sinister agenda and that is why the NPR approved by them yesterday is very dangerous and different in terms of the TEXT as well as the CONTEXT of NPR 2010.
“If the BJP's motives are bonafide, let the Government unconditionally state that they support the NPR form and design of 2010 and have no intention of linking it to the controversial NRC,” he said on Twitter.
Chidambaram also said that he was happy that the BJP had released a video clip of the launch of NPR in 2010. “Please listen to the video. We were enumerating the ‘usual residents’ of the country. The emphasis is on residency not citizenship,” he said. The Congress leader said cases had been registered against 8,000 people for anti-CAA protests in Chennai, 1,300 were booked in Madurai; and cases registered against 1,200 for taking out a candle march in Aligarh.
“Long live the right to assemble peacefully guaranteed by the Constitution! Police believe that peaceful protests are more dangerous to law and order then rape, murder and lynching,” he said on Twitter.
The government has ruled out any link between the update of NPR and the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC), going to the extent of denying statements made by its ministers in Parliament.
While announcing the formal rollout of Census 2021, the government pitched the NPR, which had been drawn up earlier too, as a welfare facilitator. But the timing of the announcement, in the middle of a nationwide storm over citizenship and conflicting signals from the Centre, has deepened concerns as have earlier suggestions that the NPR would be the “first step” towards the NRC.
While the census “counts” the population and its assets, the NPR records personal details such as name, parents’ names, spouse’s name, gender, date of birth, place of birth, nationality (as declared), present address, permanent residential address, occupation and educational qualification of “usual residents”.
A usual resident is a person who has resided in a local area for the past six months or more or a person who intends to reside in the area for the next six months. The NPR exercise will not be carried out in Assam, where the final NRC had been drawn up in August.
Union home minister Amit Shah and information and broadcasting minister Prakash Javadekar used the Congress-led UPA as the crutch to hard-sell the NPR.
“The exercise will be identical to the one carried out by UPA, which you all welcomed,” Javadekar said while announcing the cabinet decision to allocate Rs 12,695.58 crore for the census and the NPR on Tuesday.
While the UPA did undertake the first NPR, it was in line with an amendment incorporated into the Citizenship Act by the NDA government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
