Delhi's Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)-led government on Friday moved a resolution against the implementation of the National Population Register (NPR) – an exercise that takes place every 10 years to identify the valid citizens of India.
The resolution was put forward by state Minister Gopal Rai.
Delhi State Chief Arvind Kejriwal while speaking on the issue of the NPR in the legislative assembly, said that 90 per cent of the people do not have birth certificates to prove their citizenship.
NPR और NRC के तहत जनता से अपनी नागरिकता साबित करने को कहा जाएगा। 90% लोगों के पास ये साबित करने के लिए कोई सरकारी जन्म प्रमाण पत्र नहीं है। क्या सबको डिटेंशन सेंटर भेजा जाएगा? ये डर सबको सता रहा है। केंद्र से मेरी अपील है की NPR और NRC को रोक दिया जाए। https://t.co/6ymx21Fmc7
— Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) March 13, 2020
The Delhi government said the NPR would be carried out only as per 2010 rules. In that year, when it was first introduced, people were not required to give any officials their biometric identification or submit details of their parents' birthplace.
Basically being prepared as a register of people living in India, the NPR aims to contain information collected at the local area i.e. village or sub-town, state, and national level. The mega exercise was introduced for the first time in the country in 2010 when the Congress-led coalition federal government of the United Progressive Alliance was in power.
A similar resolution was also moved by the assembly of northern Indian state Bihar, which also maintained that it would implement the original 2010 version of the demographic activity last month. Other states such as West Bengal and Kerala have also marked their protest against the endeavour to conduct an NPR audit while bringing out resolutions in their respective Stae legislatures.
The federal government-monitored move to go forward with the NPR exercise has been opposed by opposition parties voraciously, stating that it is against the minorities in the country.
However, Home Minister Amit Shah clarified in Parliament on Thursday, that no citizen of the country would be marked "D" (doubtful) if he or she failed to produce the required information. The Central Government on Thursday clarified that such information (biometric details or parents' birthplace information) has been marked optional.
“If a person doesn’t want to give specific information, he or she will not be questioned on that,” Shah said in the parliament's upper house of the Rajya Sabha while replying to the question raised by the main opposition party Congress.
A special session of the Delhi State Assembly which was called on Friday to hold discussions on the Coronavirus and National Register of Citizens (NRC) – proposed the exercise and the National Population Register (NPR), to identify illegal immigrants in the country.
