Just days after Home Minister Amit Shah claimed there is no link between the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the National Population Register (NPR), Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has said that “some” data collected for NPR “may or may not be used” for the NRC.
In an interview to The Indian Express, Prasad said a “proper legal process” will be followed for a nation-wide NRC, including consultation with state governments.
This comes after Shah, in an interview to ANI, stated that there is a lot of difference between the two. “There is no link between NRC and NPR, I am clearly stating this today.”
For the latest news and more, follow HuffPost India on Twitter, Facebook, and subscribe to our newsletter.
Opposition parties have slammed the government over the NPR and NRC with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi saying these exercises will be more disastrous than demonetisation.
AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi has also said that the NPR and NRC are two sides of a coin.
The Union Cabinet approved the updation of the National Population Register (NPR) and conduct of Census of India 2021 on 24 December. The NPR is a register of “usual residents” of the country that will contain demographic and biometric details, according to Scroll.
A “usual resident”, for the purposes of NPR, is a person who has resided in an 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.
At least two states — West Bengal and Kerala — have stopped work related to the updation of the NPR. Meanwhile, the Tamil Nadu government said that work on the NPR will begin in April.
(With PTI inputs)