Periodic Exercise: India approves funds for census and population survey

Aftab Ahmed
Reuters
Tue, 24 Dec 2019 00:00 UTC

India's federal cabinet approved funds on Tuesday for a census and population survey to be conducted in 2020, amid fears that the database could be used to build a controversial citizens register that has been opposed by hundreds of thousands of people who have taken to the streets.

The government approved 87.54 billion rupees ($1.23 billion) for conducting the census and 39.41 billion rupees for updating the National Population Register (NPR).

The census collects data on population, economy activity, social and cultural aspects, migration and demography, down to the lowest administrative level.

Comment: National Population Register (NPR) is different from controversial National registration for Citizens (NRC) which is implemented in North Eastern state of Assam under Supreme court supervision. This NPR program is created in 2004 by then ruling UPA government led by Congress party and implemented in 2011 along with census. The approval of the funds for the census and population survey exercise is to update those documentation.

The NPR is intended to create a comprehensive identity database of every resident of India, including demographic and biometric database.

Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan

Comment: While talking to media, Indian home minister clarified that no documents needs to be submitted for NPR. He mentioned:

• People can submit the information in Govt. created App.
• The information asked in NPR is not useful for NRC and both are based on different constitutional laws. This needs to be done with census as it is done in 2011.
• it is used for planning of development programs( like education, gas, toilets, housing etc.) that benefit the citizens.
• This is standard procedure that had been done in many states before and needs update every decade (to accomodate people's life changes -deaths, births, movement from one state to other etc.)
• Some of the information gathered is needed for the activity of mapping the houses to be started in April 2020. There is no change in the time table and it is as per the plan.
• CAA mainly impacts states adjacent to Bangladesh( West Bengal and North Eastern states). But, the protests in other states is created by opposition parties for their politics. There is no provision to remove the citizenship in CAA.