NPR can't decide who's a citizen & who's not

NEW DELHI: The data collected for the National Population Register (NPR) will not confer a right to Indian citizenship, says the new 2020-21 manual of instructions issued for enumerators by the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India. It also cautions enumerators against getting into arguments over nationality with individuals in households across the country.“Nationality recorded is as declared by the respondent and does not confer any right to Indian citizenship,” says the manual, a copy of which has been seen by ET.The manual instructs enumerators that in cases where the nationality of persons in the same household is different, they must “probe this question for each individual carefully to get the correct information”. However, it says, “Do not get into any argument with the respondent regarding this (nationality). Please inform the respondent to give correct nationality of each person in the household.”Data for NPR updation will be collected between April 1 and September 30, 2020, as per a notification issued by the Registrar General of India on July 31 this year.People will be asked 21 questions this time, up from 14 when NPR was introduced in 2011 by the then Congress government along with the Census. A pretest for NPR was held between August and September and responses of 3 million individuals were recorded.The new categories introduced for 2020 NPR are Aadhaar (voluntary), mobile number, date and place of birth of parents, place of last residence, passport number, voter identity cards, permanent account number (PAN) and driving licence number.Resistance by StatesIn 2011, details such as name, date of birth, sex, marital status, educational qualification, occupational activity, father and mother’s names and nationality (as declared) were among the questions posed to respondents.Union minister Prakash Javadekar had said on Tuesday after a cabinet meet, “No documents or biometrics will be taken during the NPR process. Whatever people will say will be accepted.”NPR is a database of “usual residents” of the country and the government has said that it will not be used for the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC), which is meant to be an official record of legal Indian citizens.Several states government including West Bengal, Kerala, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Punjab have stopped work on NPR despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah clarifying that the NPR data will not be used for NRC. 73002638 Protests against NRC have been raging in parts of the country ever since the government introduced the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, which sought to grant Indian citizenship to non-Muslim illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan, in Parliament earlier this month.On Friday, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee said that as long as she is alive the Citizenship (Amendment) Act will not be implemented in the state. The West Bengal government was first to halt the work on NPR.Congress leader Rahul Gandhi compared NPR and NRC with demonetisation. “Whether NPR or NRC, it is a tax on poor people of the country,” he told media persons in Chhattisgarh on Friday. “Poor people will have to go to officers and show their documents and give bribe. They will have to give bribe if there is a slight mistake in their names. Crores of rupees will be pulled out of the pockets of the poor and will be given to the same 15 people. This is the truth. It is an attack on the people.”NPR was updated in 2015-16 in all states and Union territories, except Assam and Meghalaya, leading to an electronic database of more than 1.19 billion usual residents of the country.

from Economic Times https://ift.tt/363fQ3T