Andhra Pradesh govt to pass resolution against new NPR, tweets Jagan

Following the footsteps of Bihar, the Andhra Pradesh government will pass a resolution in the state assembly urging the Centre to exclude some of the questions proposed in the National Population Register (NPR) as they’re causing insecurities in the minds of minorities of the Telugu state.

Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy on Tuesday (March 3) took to Twitter to express the same and said the move comes only after having elaborate discussions within the party.

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“Some of the questions proposed in the NPR are causing insecurities in the minds of minorities of my state. After elaborate consultations within our party, we have decided to request the Central Government to revert the conditions to those prevailing in 2010. To this effect, we will also introduce a resolution in the upcoming assembly session,” he tweeted.

To this effect, we will also introduce a resolution in the upcoming assembly session. (2/2)

— YS Jagan Mohan Reddy (@ysjagan) March 3, 2020

Jagan had on Tuesday afternoon held a meeting with a delegation of Muslim representations at his camp office at Tadepalli in which the representatives expressed concern over the questions which will be asked as part of NPR during census work.

Last month, the Nitish Kumar-led Janata Dal (United), which is a part of the Non-Democratic Alliance (NDA) passed a resolution against the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and became the first NDA-ruled state to do so.

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The BJP-ally state will now only go along with the NPR on the condition that the Union home ministry doesn’t use the new contentious questions.

The NRC is the official record of all the legal citizens of India. The state-specific exercise, whose creation is mandated by the 2003 amendment of the Citizenship Act 1955, consists of demographic information of all individuals who qualify as citizens of India to keep its ethnic uniqueness unaltered. The first such record was created after the 1951 Census of India while it hasn’t been updated to date.

As for the NPR, it is a record of the ‘usual residents’ of the country. A person who has resided in a specific area for the past 6 months (or more) or intends to reside for the next six months or more, he/she is qualified as a usual resident. The NPR follows the provisions of the Citizenship Act, 1955 with an aim to create a comprehensive identity database of every usual resident in the country, including the demographic as well as biometric particulars.

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Meanwhile, the questions which are being viewed with a suspicion in the updated version of the database ask the respondent to reveal details about his/her mother tongue, the place and date of birth of the respondent’s parents.

Even as the Centre insisted, amid CAA row, that no decision has been taken yet on NRC, the opposition parties have said this declaration does not imply that the government won’t go for NRC in the future.

During the ensuing budget session, the Telangana government, too, decided to move a resolution against the NPR in the legislative assembly, urging the Centre to implement the old format of NPR, instead of the revised one proposed for 2020 Census.

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Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao also announced that a resolution against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) would also be passed in the state assembly during the budget session beginning March 6.

The above decisions could also be a part of Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan speech in her joint address to the legislative assembly and council on the first day of the session.

The Congress, Trinamool Congress, Biju Janata Dal (BJD), JD(U), CPI(M), Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), TRS and YSRCP — have opposed a nationwide NRC.