Yogi govt halts NPR exercise in UP till further orders amid rising Coronavirus cases

Amid unprecedented Coronavirus outbreak, the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh has decided to halt all exercises related to the National population register (NPR) till further notice. Currently, UP has reported 4057 coronavirus cases. Issuing a circular on Saturday, the UP government said that the first phase of Census 2021 & NPR which includes counting of the number of households and house, has been stopped in view of the outbreak of Covid 19. The circular has been undersigned by Principal Secretary Jitendra Kumar and has been sent to all district magistrates and district heads.

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Earlier on March 24 when PM Modi announced pan-India 21-day lockdown, the first phase of the NPR and the Census process has been deferred. The NPR was scheduled to be prepared between April 2020 and September 2020. Nationwide protests against NRC-CAA-NPR have been witnessed since November and had continued till recently, but had to be stalled temporarily amid state curfews.

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States pass ant-NPR resolutions

As of date, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West Bengal, and Madhya Pradesh have opposed the NPR in its current format - demanding it to be restored to its 2010 version. Moreover, states like Rajasthan, Punjab, Kerala, West Bengal, Telangana, Chhatisgarh have passed ant-CAA resolutions too. The NPR updation, costing Rs. 3941 crore has been approved by the Union cabinet and Home Minister Amit Shah had stressed that no individual would be marked as ‘doubtful’.

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What is the National population register?

The NPR was first prepared in 2010 and updated in 2015. It is an identity database maintained of all the usual residents of the country and is prepared at the local, sub-District, District, State and National level under provisions of the Citizenship Act 1955. Any resident who has resided in a local area for the past 6 months or more, or intends to do the same has to mandatorily register in the NPR.

The Centre has stated that NPR is a self-declaration where no document, bio-metric, etc. required for it. The details required in the document are name, relationship to head of household, father's name, mother's name, spouse's name (if married), sex, date of birth, marital status, place of birth, nationality (as declared), present address of usual residence, duration of stay at present address, permanent residential address, occupation, educational qualification. The updation which has been clubbed with the 2021 census count.

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