No documents or biometrics required for NPR, says Prakash Javadekar

Union Minister Prakash Javadekar has said that no documents or biometrics will be taken during the National Population register process.

Announcing the cabinet's decision, taken on Tuesday with regards to the contentious NPR, the Human Resource Development Minister said that the upcoming NPR was no different than the one conducted in 2010 by the UPA government.

The process of updating the NPR will be held between April and September 2020, before the Census which is due to start from February 2021.

Prakash Javadekar told media that the government has allocated Rs 13,000 crore for NPR and Census. Rs 8,754 crore have been allocated for the Census and Rs 3941 crore for the NPR.

The minister also said that all the states have already accepted to do NPR and their officers are being trained.

Javadekar assured that no document or biometric will be taken during the process of NPR. "Whatever people will say will be accepted," he said at a press conference in New Delhi on Tuesday.

WHAT IS NPR?

The NPR is a list of "usual residents" of the country. A "usual resident" is defined for the purposes of NPR as a person who has resided in a local area for the past



six months or more or a person who intends to reside in that area for the next six months or more.

The data for National Population Register was collected in 2010 along with the house-listing phase of Census of India 2011.

The data was updated in 2015 by conducting door-to-door survey.

The digitisation of the updated information has been completed.

Now, it has been decided to update the National Population Register along with the house-listing phase of Census 2021 from April to September 2020 in all the states/union territories except Assam, according to the website of the Office of the Registrar General, and Census Commissioner.

A gazette notification to this effect was issued in August this year.

The NPR will be prepared at the local (village/sub-Town), sub-district, district, state and national level under provisions of the Citizenship Act 1955 and the Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003.

It is mandatory for every usual resident of India to register in the NPR. As per the government, the objective of the NPR is to create a comprehensive identity database of every usual resident in the country.