The National Population Register requires people to declare "date and place of birth of both parents".
Highlights
- NPR requires people to declare "date and place of birth of both parents"
- This data was not collected for the National Population Register in 2010
- Controversy in context of citizens' list NRC to identify illegal migrants
The National Population Register (NPR) announced by the government on Tuesday requires people to declare the "date and place of birth of both parents" for the first time. This data was not collected for the NPR in 2010, many have pointed out.
This has become controversial in the context of the National Register for Citizen (NRC), an exercise to identify illegal migrants.
Under the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, for people born after 1987, at least one parent must be a citizen. Critics raised the possibility on social media that the parents' date and place of birth would be needed if the nationwide NRC is carried out, as announced multiple times by Home Minister Amit Shah in parliament and outside.
In the last NPR, data was collected on 15 criteria. This time data on 21 points will be collected. These include last place of residence, passport number, Aadhaar ID, Voter ID card number, drivers' license number and mobile phone number, which were not asked before.
Parents' name and name of spouse have been crunched into one point to accommodate the new details.
"Govt has decided to update National Population Register (NPR) with a sanction of Rs 8,500 crores. NPR will require people to declare date & place of birth of parents and furnishing of data on 21 other points. Most of this data was not collected in the last NPR exercise in 2010," tweeted CPM leader Sitaram Yechury.
Amit Shah last evening asserted that data for the NPR would not be used for NRC. He also said there was no talk of NRC right now.
"There is no link between the NPR and NRC. I am clearly stating this today," he said in an interview to news agency ANI hours after the government approved the upgrade of the population list NPR at the cost of Rs 3,941 crore.
"NPR is the register of population on the basis of which schemes are made. NRC asks people on what basis they are the citizens of the country. The two processes are not linked. The NPR data cannot be used for NRC," said the Home Minister, adding that the NPR would be the basis for deciding beneficiaries of various government schemes.