NPR beneficial for welfare schemes, strengthening security: MHA officials

The National Population Register (NPR), which will be carried out across the country next year, will have credible data of every family and individual, strengthen the national security and can be used for transparent and efficient delivery of social benefits, officials said on Tuesday.

During the NPR exercise, no documents will be collected at the time of the door to door enumeration.

"The NPR is a register of usual residents linked with location particulars such as village or town, sub-district, district and state. It will strengthen security. At present, there is no proposal to create a National Register of Citizens (NRC) in the country based on NPR data," a home ministry official said.

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During updating of the NPR, no biometric data will be collected from citizens. The aim is to create a credible register of every family and individual and improve the delivery mechanism of benefits under various government schemes and programmes, officials said.

By linking the NPR with the registration of birth and death, real-time population register will be available leading to a register-based census in future, they said.

The NPR data can be used for transparent and efficient delivery of social benefits by linking it with various beneficiary oriented government schemes, they said.

The benefits could be obtained in banking, insurance services, admission in school, colleges and hostels, scholarship, distribution of seed, fertiliser, pesticide, marketing credit, registration of land, property, shares, health and medical services, public distribution system, gender issues, child marriage, marital status, maintenance of separated women.

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The government will get data on employment, disaster management, disability, old age pension, freedom fighter.

Another official said the socio-economic caste census (SECC) is based on the NPR data, which was subsequently used for deciding different types of beneficiaries.

Household wise NPR data was used in better targeting of schemes such as Ayushman Bharat, Jan Dhan Yojana, Prime Minister Awas Yojna, Ujjwala Yojana, Saubhagya etc.

The NPR household data was also provided to various state governments viz. Tamilnadu, West Bengal, Odisha, Manipur for 'Sarvam', PDS scheme and Rajasthan for 'Bhamashah'.

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The NPR is a register of usual residents of the country.

A usual resident is defined, for the purposes of the 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.

The NPR will be updated along with house listing and housing census from April to September 2020.

The NPR was prepared in 2010 under the provisions of the Citizenship Act, 1955 and Citizenship Rules, 2003, which was subsequently updated in 2015 by seeding it with Aadhaar. 

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