Over 1,000 women from across the country have written to all chief ministers urging them to delink the National Population Register (NPR) from the census to ensure the sanctity of the enumeration process.

Now that 13 states and Union Territories — representing over 50 per cent of the India’s population — have rejected the NPR in its current form, the women want the chief ministers of these states to back up the expression of intent with clear-cut executive orders decoupling the two and notifying only the census in their respective jurisdictions.

The recipients of the letter include the BJP chief ministers. It points out that women constitute 50 per cent of the population and are opposed to the NPR because they often do not have land or property in their names, have lower literacy rates and are more unlikely to have documentation, making them more vulnerable in the citizenship verification process.

This, they pointed out, was evident from the Assam NRC that left out 6 per cent of the population, many of them women who left their natal homes without taking documents to their marital home.

“This is the frightening reality staring many Indian women in the face today,” the letter said.

“Section 14A of the Citizenship Act, the accompanying 2003 Rules, and official reports of the Ministry of Home Affairs, all provide for using NPR data to compile the National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC). The NRIC will be prepared by local registers scrutinising information of individuals in the Population Register and marking people as ‘doubtful citizens’.

“While the Home Minister on March 12, 2020, stated in Parliament that no one will be marked ‘doubtful’, his assurance carries no legal sanctity until the relevant statutes and rules are formally amended,” the letter said.

It also urged state governments to ensure that no punitive action was taken against anyone boycotting the NPR.

The signatories flagged the examples of Kerala and Bengal, which have issued executive orders staying the rollout of the NPR, and Rajasthan and Jharkhand where orders have been issued to delink the register from the census.