Cabinet approves proposal to update National Population Register

New Delhi: New Delhi: The Union Cabinet today approved a proposal to update the National Population Register (NPR). The Census Commission has said the objective of the NPR is to create a comprehensive identity database of every "usual resident" of the country. 

The database will have demographic as well as biometric details. A "usual resident", for the NPR, is a person who has lived in an area for at least six months or more, or a person who intends to live in an area for the next six months or more. It is mandatory for every "usual resident" of India to register in the NPR.

The NPR, which is linked to the Census, is seen as the first step towards a nationwide exercise to implement the National Register of Citizens (NRC). Though an NPR doesn't necessarily mean it's guaranteed there will be an NRC, it clears the path for the citizens' list exercise that was taken up in Assam, sources said. This is seen as one of the reasons why some states like West Bengal and Kerala have stopped work on the NPR.

The NPR exercise will be held between April and September 2020 in all states and Union Territories except Assam, where the National Register of Citizens exercise to identify illegal migrants has already been conducted.

The data for NPR was first collected in 2010 during the second term of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, along with the house-listing phase of Census 2011.

The NPR data was first updated in 2015 with door-to-door surveys; digitisation of the updated data is complete now, officials said.

In



the next step, the government has decided to update the NPR along with the house-listing phase of Census 2021 in 2020.

West Bengal and Kerala have stopped the NPR exercise, over a week after the controversial bill to amend the Citizenship Act was passed by both houses of parliament.

"After considering the concerns raised in the wake of the 2019 amendment in the Citizenship Act, the state government has decided not to cooperate with the process to update the NPR to facilitate the preparation of the NRC," the office of Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said in a statement last week.

Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said, "All activities regarding the preparation and updation of the National Population Register are stayed in West Bengal. No activity regarding NRP may be taken up without clearance from the government of West Bengal."

The Bengal government's order to the civic bodies and district magistrates to stop NPR work came amid furore over the Citizenship (Amendment) Act. Bengal is one of the three states - the others are Kerala and Punjab - that has refused to implement the law, through the centre has said that the states have no choice in the matter.

The Citizenship (Amendment) Act for the first time makes religion the test of citizenship in India. The government says it will help minorities from three Muslim-dominated countries to get citizenship if they fled to India before 2015 because of religious persecution. Critics say it is designed to discriminate against Muslims and violates the secular principles of the constitution.