"No Reasonable Answer": Opp MPs on NPR questionnaire after meeting Home Sec

Welcome Guest! You are here: Home » India

"No Reasonable Answer": Opp MPs on NPR questionnaire after meeting Home Sec

The National Population Register (NPR) is scheduled to take off on April 1 as per the government notification

Tuesday February 18, 2020 11:28 PM, ummid.com with inputs from IANS

New Delhi: Several opposition MPs on Tuesday grilled Union Home Secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla over additional columns in the National Population Register (NPR) questionnaire during a meeting of the department related standing committee on Home.

After the meeting, the Opposition MPs said the Home Secretary had no reasonable answer to offer on the questionnaire.

The National Population Register (NPR) is scheduled to take off on April 1 as per the government notification, to enumerate usual residents of the country.

The practice however has evoked large scale controversy and protest as the government has inserted certain addition questions in the format including date and place of birth of individuals' parents.

Sources said, during the deliberations on the allocation of fund for conducting NPR and Census exercise in the budget, opposition members asked the Home Ministry officials the reasons for changing the NPR questionnaire vis-a-vis 2010, when the exercise was first conducted in the country.

"No reasonable answer was provided by them except that the additional questions are optional and people are free not to answer them," a source said.

To the question, "will not such persons be marked for not offering the answers on contentious questions?", they officials said, "They will not be marked."

"But we contended that the exercise may turn out to be a prelude to preparing National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC)", the sources said.

"On this they (the officials) had no answer to offer", they said.

For all the latest News, Opinions and Views, download ummid.com App.

Select Language To Read in Urdu, Hindi, Marathi or Arabic.