Congress picks up where Arundhati Roy left off, says "make NPR a Non-Performing Register"

Amid nationwide debate on the links between NPR and NRC, Congress' senior leader has stoked a controversy by calling NPR as Non-Performing Register. Taking to Twitter on Thursday, Sibal said that it is in NDA's design to bring CAA first and then to implement NRC. He has claimed that if that fails, the NDA will bring NPR, which is a new one and is not the one brought by the UPA government in 2010. He has in his tweet also alleged that these are "sinister" attempts and it will "disenfranchise people" and "violate the privacy."

READ: Ram Madhav clears doubt on NPR, says 'it's based on poverty & not religion'

Here is his tweet:

READ: Arundhati Roy asks Indians to 'lie' in census over NPR, says 'give fake names'

BJP refutes Opposition's claims on NPR

Minister of State, Prime Minister’s Office Dr. Jitendra Singh on Thursday posted an old video nailing the alleged contradictory stance of Congress over NPR. In the video, P Chidambaram is heard saying, “Once he goes voluntarily. To Aadhaar, he goes voluntarily. To the NPR camp, he would have to attend the first and the second camp mandatorily. And this is not a big issue. People gather many times in a year for a temple festival, for death, for a marriage. If you come from a village as I do you will understand- gathering in a village is not a great thing. People do gather and people gather many times.”  

Maintaining that NPR was mandatory in nature, the MoS PMO brushed aside concerns that it could inconvenience the citizens. Chidambaram opined that it was “not a big issue” as people gathered for many occasions such as a wedding and temple festival.  

What is NPR?

The NPR exercise is to commence from April next year. The NPR is a list of "usual residents" of the country. Updating of this data was done during 2015 by conducting a door-to-door survey. The digitisation of the updated information has been completed. Now it has been decided to update the National Population Register along with the house-listing phase of Census 2021 from April to September 2020 in all the states/union territories, except Assam.

READ: "NPR first, then NRC" reiterates Owaisi even as HM clarifies on rumours linking both