NEW DELHI: The government will launch a drive instructing the “head of the family” to make available details of 21identifiers during enrolment in the National Population Register (NPR). These will include Aadhaar, driving licence, Permanent Account Number (PAN) and voter ID card, ET has learnt.The nationwide NPR is to be held from April 1 to September 30 to record the ‘usual residents’ of the country who have lived in an area for the previous six months or more, or persons who intend to stay there for the next six months or more, according to an official notification.Several state governments have stalled work on the NPR, alleging that it’s the first step toward a National Register of Citizens (NRC), which will be used in conjunction with the Citizenship Amendment Act to disenfranchise Muslims.PM Narendra Modi has denied any such intent. Home minister Amit Shah says the NPR data will not be used for an NRC and that there has been no decision on conducting an NRC as of now.The questionnaire for NPR 2020 is likely to continue with the controversial column on “date and place of birth of parents” besides other fields. A senior government official explained to ET that this question didn’t have any sinister connotations.Ensuring Data Security“These details were recorded during the previous NPR enumeration as part of a single question on parents,” the government official said. “This time, we have a separate question on the place of birth to ascertain if they are staying with the children or not.”Congress politician and former minister of state for home affairs Ajay Maken has criticised the government’s move to modify the NPR form. “As MoS Home in 2010, I supervised the NPR! But Modi-Shah 2020 NPR is totally different,” he tweeted on December 25. 73053355 Officials said the Registrar General of India (RGI) will further ensure that the data collected using mobile apps by enumerators and supervisors are secure. Only those with verified credentials can download the app using logins and passwords provided by the census commissioner, they said.“The mobile IMEI number will help us to identify the enumerator who is using the app and recording the data,” one of the officials said.NPR was first rolled out by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government along with the 2011 Census. In 2011, details such as name, date of birth, sex, marital status, educational qualification, occupational activity, father and mother’s name, nationality (as declared) were among the questions asked of respondents.According to the home ministry, NPR data has been previously provided to the governments of Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Manipur for the Sarvam scheme that tracks subsidies and the public distribution scheme (PDS). Rajasthan has been given NPR data for the Bhamashah women’s empowerment scheme.In 2015-16, the NPR database was updated in all states and Union Territories, except Assam and Meghalaya.“The electronic database of more than 1.19 billion usual residents of the country has already been created under NPR,” said the official. “The number of questions were 14 then, but were subsequently increased to 21 during the 2019 pre-test that was held from April 12, 2019, to September 30, 2019. The pre-test was held in 74 districts during which demographic details of around 3 million individuals were collected.”
from Economic Times https://ift.tt/2QE3Hvs
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