Days after the Union Budget allocated Rs 6,000 crore for the National Population Register (NPR) and Census 2027, the CPI(M)-led Kerala government has issued an order that NPR will not be implemented in the state.
On February 5, in an extraordinary gazette, the state government issued a notification saying, “…the Government hereby declares that all activities connected with the updation of National Population Register in the State stand suspended with effect from 20 December, 2019.” This was the day when the implementation of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) began in India.
The NPR is the enumeration of the usual residents of the country. Following the passage of the CAA in 2019, concern was raised that it would pave the way for the conduct of the National Register of Citizens (NRC), which the Opposition alleged was an effort to deprive some minorities of citizenship.
The Union Budget presented last Sunday said, under “Census, Survey and Statistics/Registrar General of India (RGI)”, Rs 6,000 crore has been allocated, of which Rs 218 crore is capital expenditure. The Budget describes this allocation as including “provisions for the office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India and various schemes of RGI, including National Population Register (NPR) and expenditure on Census, 2027”.
Referring to the latest notification against NPR, a communication from the Kerala Chief Minister’s Office said in 2019 that the state had ordered to stop all procedures related to implementing the NPR along with the Census.
“It is the professed policy of the state government that NPR will not be implemented in Kerala at any cost. Since the Census is slated to be conducted from next year, there are strong rumours that NPR will also be held along with that. The new order reaffirming the government’s stand against the NPR was issued against this background,” it said.
It said the order was issued by upholding the government’s “unequivocal stand” against NPR. Kerala’s was the first state Assembly in the country to pass a resolution against CAA. The state government had also moved the Supreme Court against the Union government, arguing that CAA was unconstitutional.
