The Kerala government on Monday decided to inform the Centre that it was hard-pressed to cooperate with the work related to the drawing up and revision of the National Population Register (NPR). However, Kerala would fully cooperate with the Census 2021.
Earlier, Kerala had joined West Bengal in suspending all work on the NPR.
The special Cabinet meet, which convened here, concluded the people were deeply concerned that the NPR, a biometric roster of citizens, was a precursor to the proposed National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC).
The highly controversial NRIC was purportedly an extension of the NPR. The NRIC envisaged a taluk registrar of citizen registration to oversee the preparation of the list of “Indian citizens” at the sub-district level to exclude people of “doubtful citizenship” from the safety and welfare net of the State.
‘Deep insecurity’
The Cabinet said that any move to implement the NPR against the looming backdrop of the NRIC would cause deep insecurity in Kerala and adversely affect the law and order situation.
The State government was constitutionally bound to allay the fears of the population and uphold public peace. Hence, the State was constrained to inform the Registrar General and Census Commission, Union Ministry of Home Affairs, that it could not cooperate with the preparation of the NPR.
The government said District Collectors had reported that any move to link the Census process with the NPR would trigger public law and order issues.
The Cabinet’s decision is consistent with the political position of the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) that the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) and the NPR were the head and tail of the same coin and patently anti-Muslim.
The Communist Party of India (Marxist) had also expressed apprehension that the CAA and the NPR and the NRIC when applied back to back, could relegate lakhs of Muslims, including naturalised refugees and migrants from neighbouring countries, to the status of illegal aliens and deprive them the safety net of the State.
The Cabinet decision came against the backdrop of growing protests against the CAA and the population register.
The State had also appealed the citizenship law in the Supreme Court on the ground that it discriminated against Muslims seeking citizenship status in India and hence ran against the grain of the secular foundation of the Constitution.
