The National Population Register will not be allowed to be implemented in Kerala, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan reiterated on Saturday.
Vijayan said on social media that ahead of the 2027 Census, the Kerala government has issued a fresh notification “ensuring no data for NPR is collected”, adding that the state’s Left government was “upholding our firm stand since 2019”.
The National Population Register is a list of all the usual residents of India. It was first prepared in 2010. In 2015, information in some fields, such as name, gender and date and place of birth, was updated.
On February 4, in a fresh gazette notification, the Kerala government reiterated that “all activities connected with the updation of National Population Register in the state stand suspended” with effect from December 20, 2019.
The notification had come three days after the Union government in its Budget on February 1 proposed to allocate Rs 6,000 crore for “Census, Survey and Statistics/Registrar General of India”.
The Budget notes said that the allocation includes “provisions for the office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India and various schemes of RGI [Registrar-General of India], including National Population Register (NPR) and expenditure on Census 2027”.
The notification also come after the Registrar General, which reports to the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, on January 22 issued 33 questions for officials to ask citizens during the Census.
Kerala’s February 4 notification had been issued to remove any ambiguity amid speculation that the National Population Register exercise could be conducted alongside the Census, The Hindu quoted the chief minister’s office as saying on Friday.
On Saturday, Vijayan said that Kerala had been the first state to challenge the “unconstitutional CAA [Citizenship Amendment Act]” in the Supreme Court and pass an Assembly resolution against it.
“We remain committed to protecting constitutional values and will not allow discriminatory processes like NPR/NRC [National Register of Citizens] to threaten our people,” the chief minister added.
After the Union government announced in June that India would conduct the population Census in phases that conclude in 2027, reports had said that this would also pave the way for the National Population Register to be updated.
In July, the Union government told Parliament that it was yet to decide on updating the National Population Register.
The National Population Register is viewed as the first step to creating a nationwide National Register of Citizens, which will identify undocumented migrants residing in the country.
While the National Population Register itself does not determine citizenship or require residents to submit documents, its link with the National Register of Citizens and the contentious Citizenship Amendment Rules has raised concerns.
The Citizenship Amendment Act provides a fast track to citizenship to refugees from six minority religious communities, except Muslims, from Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan, on the condition that they lived in India for six years and had entered the country by December 31, 2014.
In March 2024, the Union government notified the Citizenship Amendment Rules, enabling the implementation of the Act.
The amendment to the Citizenship Act has been widely criticised for excluding Muslims, sparking massive protests across the country when it was passed in 2019. Indian Muslims fear that the law could be used, along with the nationwide National Register of Citizens, to harass and disenfranchise them.
The Union government has claimed that it has no plans to conduct the National Register of Citizens exercise across the country.
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