After approving the Union Cabinet’s Digital Register, a comprehensive identity database of all people living in India, Home Minister Amit Shah said on Tuesday that there is no connection between the National Register (NRC) and the National Population Register (NPR).
Shah’s statement in an interview with news agency ANI came amid announcements by chief ministers of West Bengal and Kerala to back out of the data-gathering exercise for NPR. This is a decision endorsed by Asaduddin Owaisi of All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen.
“My simple request to the two chief ministers is to reconsider this decision,” Shah told the news agency, adding that his decision would harm the poor who are benefiting from government schemes.
The home minister also said that he would reach out to two chief ministers and others if they needed to be persuaded. “I humbly appeal to both the Chief Ministers again, not to take any such step and please review their decisions. They did not exclude the poor from development programs just for your politics,” he told ANI.
“This population register is going to lay the foundation for the development activities that are carried out.”
Responding to a question from Owaisi that the population register was effectively NRC with a different name, Shah said that AIMIM leaders always oppose whatever BJP says.
“If we say that the sun rises in the east, it will say in the west. This is his stand. But I assure Owaisi that this (NPR) has nothing to do with NRC.
Shah said the NPR is not even in the BJP manifesto, but the government is just issuing “a good practice” which was started by the Congress.
The Home Minister’s clarification on ANI was told by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a rally in Delhi that his government had not discussed the verified digital register NRC of citizens in Parliament or the Cabinet.
Union Minister Prakash Javadekar briefed the cabinet decisions to authorize spending over Rs 3,940 crore to update the National Population Register.
Incidentally, in 2014, the government told the Center that the government decided to create a national register of Indian citizens based on the information collected under the National Population Register (NPR) scheme by verifying the citizenship status of all individuals in the country. “Proposals for spending approval are being prepared,” then junior home minister Kiren Rijiju told the Lok Sabha.