Patna, February 25: The Bihar assembly on Tuesday passed a resolution asserting that the National Register of Citizens (NRC) will not be implemented in the state. Another resolution declaring that the National Population Register (NPR) would be updated in the way that it was done in 2010-2011 was also passed by the Bihar assembly. The House witnessed brief ruckus following a heated argument between Leader of Opposition Tejashwi Yadav and legislators of the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA). NRC Slip Up: How Final List And Data Related to Assam National Register of Citizens Disappeared From nrcassam.nic.in.
During the discussion, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said the state government has written to the Centre seeking omission of contentious clauses from NPR forms. "Even I don't know when my mother was born. There is no need to bring about NRC," Kumar added. The Janata Dal (United) President recently asserted that "NRC is not going to be implemented here (in Bihar) and only NPR will be carried out the way it was done in the year 2010". CAA-NRC Fears: Two Women Mistaken As Enumerators Attacked by Mob in Rajasthan And West Bengal.
"The government has issued the NPR notification whereas the Chief Minister is saying that the NPR will happen on the basis of how it was conducted in 2010. They should clarify that the NPR will take place as per the 2010 rule," Tejashwi told reporters. The new NPR form has questions seeking details of parents' birth date, Aadhaar number, passport number, mobile phone number, voter ID number and mother tongue. Why Citizenship Amendment Act+NRC Raise Fear And Concerns: A Multi-Dimensional Take.
The NPR is scheduled to be updated simultaneously with the house-listing phase of the decennial Census exercise from April 1 to September 30. Kumar's JD(U), a key ally of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), had voted in favour of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in Parliament. The CAA provides Indian citizenship to members of six non-Muslim minority communities in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.
Critics say the new questions introduced in the NPR form are related to citizenship and will lay a foundation for the nationwide NRC exercise. While non-Muslim left out of the final NRC list could be able to get citizenship under the CAA, Muslims will be deported or sent to detention centres, they say. Earlier this month, the Centre told Parliament that no decision has been taken to carry out nationwide NRC.
"Till now, the government has not taken any decision to prepare National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC) at the national level," Union Minister of State for Home Affairs, Nityanand Rai said in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha.
(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Feb 25, 2020 03:53 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).