Prime Minister Narendra Modi replying to the debate in the Rajya Sabha on a motion thanking the President for his address to the joint sitting of both houses of Parliament. (Source: YouTube screengrab/Rajya Sabha)
Throwing his weight behind the National Population Register (NPR) exercise, Prime Minister Narendra Modi Thursday said it was being updated to allow the rightful beneficiaries get the benefit of government welfare schemes.
“Dont try to mislead people,” Modi said while replying to the debate in the Rajya Sabha on a motion thanking the President for his address to the joint sitting of both houses of Parliament. “They (Opposition) are opposing (NPR) for narrow and frivolous political narrative. This is anti-poor.”
The Prime Minister further said that his government had made productive use of the data collected by previous NPR to give benefits of the schemes to the poor. “We have record of your NPR, no citizen was persecuted based on that record of NPR,” he said, citing the statement of the home minister of the Congress-led UPA government appealing to citizens to enrol in the exercise.
Stating that the NPR was first done in 2010 and later updated in 2015, PM Modi said the Census and NPR are “usual administrative” processes which have been carried out previously as well but have now suddenly become contentious.
Questions asked in the NPR are purely governance-related, he said while citing the example of asking citizens of the language spoken by them and their parents are deeply linked to the schools that need to be set up in that particular area.
Many state governments have opposed the NPR updation move, prompted by concerns that the central government would use the data collected to implement the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC). On Tuesday, the government had reiterated that it has not taken any decision on the countrywide NRC even as protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and NRC will mark two months next week.
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It had also moved to allay fears over personal data being collected for the pre-Census updation of the NPR by making clear that no document will be collected during the exercise — and that providing Aadhaar number would be voluntary.
The government is currently in discussion with states over the NPR exercise, which is slated to be updated between April and September, 2020. The Census will be conducted from February 9-28, 2021.