The data for National Population Register (NPR) was first collected in 2010 and West Bengal was one of the five States that used the requisite information for planning various beneficiary schemes, a senior government official said.
The other States which used the NPR data collected by the Registrar General of India (RGI) on behalf of the Centre were Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Manipur and Rajasthan.
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West Bengal and Kerala issued orders last week that they will not allow NPR in their States. The States declined to update NPR amid apprehensions that it will be followed by the National Register of Citizens (NRC). A senior government official said the gazette notification to carry out the third phase of NPR was issued on July 31 and all States had subsequently followed suit.
The NPR was updated in 2015 by seeding it with biometric details of Aadhaar.
The data under NPR was collected through door-to-door enumeration under various categories like age, marital status, place of birth, nationality (as declared), present and permanent residential address, occupation, activity and educational qualification.
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Though the Government denied on Tuesday that there was any link between NPR and the NRC, the Rules inserted in 2003 to the Citizenship Act, 1955 said that NRC will be prepared at the “local, district, State and national level after verifying the details in the NPR and establishing the citizenship of each individual.”
A senior government official said the Socio Economic Caste Census (SECC) is based on the NPR data, which was subsequently used for deciding different types of beneficiaries.
“Household wise NPR data was used in better targeting of schemes such as Ayushman Bharat, Jan Dhan Yojana, Prime Minister Awas Yojana, Ujjwala Yojana, Saubhagya etc,” the official claimed.
The 2011 caste data collected as part of SECC along with the Census data, is yet to be released by the Centre due to errors.
An advertisement issued in 2010 regarding NPR however said that camps will be held in every locality for collection of biometric data of all residents who are 5 years old and above.
An archived page on censusindia.gov.in said that “a proposal to issue Resident Identity Cards to all usual residents in the NPR of 18 years of age and above is under consideration of the Government. This proposed Identity Card would be a smart card and would bear the Aadhaar number.”