NEW DELHI : Amid fiery protests over the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act raging across the country, the Narendra Modi cabinet is mulling to update the National Population Register(NPR), beginning April in the coming year. According to sources, the Union Cabinet in its meeting today will consider allocating funds for the elaborate exercise.
The NPR is aimed to create a comprehensive identity database of every usual resident in the country, which would contain demographic as well as biometric particulars.
The meticulously prepared volume comprises list of “Usual Residents” of the country, defined as a person who has resided in a locality for past six months or more or a person who intends to reside there for the next six months or more.
The last time the dossier was updated was in 2015 by conducting a door to door survey. The digitalization of the data is now complete and not once again, the NPR will be updated alongside Houselisting Phase of Census 2021 during April to September 2020 in all states and Union Territories except Assam.
NPR will be prepared at the local(panchayat/sub-town), sub-district, district, state and national level under provisions of the Citizenship Act 1955 and Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003. Law requires every usual resident of India to register in the NPR.
A gazette notification on the upcoming survey was issued earlier in August this year.
