The Jharkhand Assembly on Monday passed a resolution urging the Centre to prepare the National Population Register in the 2010 format and to not implement the National Register of Citizens.

However, activists who had been urging the state government to block the NPR and NRC were not happy with the proposal that was presented by the state’s parliamentary affairs minister Alamgir Alam.

The proposal in Hindi, roughly translated, said: “This House requests the government of India to conduct the exercise for the National Population Register (NPR) in 2010 format in Jharkhand and also not to implement the National Citizenship Register (NCR).”

The proposal was passed hurriedly by voice amid protests in the Well of the House by BJP legislators, before Speaker Rabindra Nath Mahato adjourned the budget session sine die (for an indefinite period) in the second half after the annual state budget of Rs 86,370 crore for the fiscal year 2020-21 tabled on March 3 was passed by the guillotine method unopposed.

“The so-called resolution passed in the state Assembly today is just a humble request to the central government,” said economist and activist Jean Dréze, adding that most likely the Centre will ignore it.

“The need of the hour is not just a humble request but a firm decision of not implementing the NPR in Jharkhand,” he said. “Remember the main purpose of the NPR is to lay the ground for an NRC based on a very arbitrary and problematic process.”

B.B. Chaudhary, president of the state unit of Samajvadi Jan Parishad, also expressed his dissatisfaction over the resolution.

“The NPR is an unnecessary exercise and wastage of resources, more so as the data of 2010 NPR were never used,” he said.

The statistical data required for planning are available from the census report and identification of citizens with biometric details have already been done through Aadhaar, Chaudhary argued.

“The purpose of the Centre behind pursuing the NPR is to complete the first step towards the NRC,” he said, repeating the request to the Hemant Soren government to scrap the NPR.

While some have argued that the NPR in the 2010 format would be less dangerous than the 2020 format that has additional fields seeking information such as parents’ dates and places of birth, others have said the NPR exercise should be scrapped totally to stop a nationwide NRC.