No decision on nationwide NRC yet: MHA tells Parliament

MHA Image Courtesy:timesofindia.indiatimes.com

On August 10, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) was faced with quite a few questions related to the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and Census in the Lok Sabha. While the response to each of these questions is quite surficial, it is nonetheless important to look at each one of these.

It is known that the process to update the National Population Register (NPR) was to begin in April 2020 along with the phase 1 of Census which is also known as the houselisting process. The Schedule of questions for the houselisting phase was even released and government employees were being trained for the same with an instruction manual that gave details on the collection of data for NPR as well. While the updating of the NPR had caused much furore as it was suspected that NPR would become a foundation for an NRC in the future, all these processes have come to a standstill due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The NPR-Census phase stalled in April 2020, as towards the end of March 2020, the national lockdown was imposed and Covid cases were on the rise. Since then, quite expectedly, the government has not made announcements on this front. The last Census took place in 2011 and this year would have been ideal for the next Census, however since with no definite end to Covid-19 in sight, it cannot be predicted as to when a massive exercise like the Census will be scheduled.

However, the government has made a few changes here and is now going to allow digital collection of information for census or self-enumeration. The Home Ministry has stated that there will be a Mobile App for collection of data and a Census Portal for management and monitoring of various Census related activities. When Shashi Tharoor asked the Ministry if the information collected in Census will be used to prepare NRC, the Ministry said that individual data collected during Census are not used for the preparation of any other database including NRC.

The response may be read here:

Questions were also raised on whether a caste-based Census will be held, by MP S Jothimani. Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) 2011 was conducted by the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) and the then Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation (HUPA) in rural and urban areas, but the caste data has not yet been released. The Ministry has said that the raw caste data have been provided to the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (MoSJE) for classification and categorisation but there is no proposal to release the same at the moment.

The response may be read here:

About CAA-NRC

MP Sunil Kumar Mondal questioned the Ministry on the government’s stand on Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 (CAA), NRC and NPR. The Ministry said that CAA has come into force on January 10, 2020 and about NRC it said, “Till Now, the Government has not taken any decision to prepare National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC) at National Level.”

The Ministry also made its stand clear on NPR, and said that it will be updated under the Citizenship Act, 1955 along with the first phase of Census, 2021. It also reiterated that demographic and other particulars of each family and individual will be updated in the NPR exercise and no document will be asked for or collected during this exercise.

The response may be read here:

MP Maneka Gandhi raised a query on what happens with persons excluded from the final NRC along with those who will then be detained after exhausting all their legal remedies as also about the government’s plan for nationality verification of such persons. The Ministry responded that any person who is not satisfied with the outcome of the decisions of the claims and objections during the process of preparation of NRC may prefer an appeal before the Foreigners Tribunals within a period of 120 days from the date of such order. The Ministry, however, clarified that such persons excluded from NRC have not yet exhausted all possible legal remedies and hence, the government has not made any plans for nationality verification at this stage.

The response may be read here: