NPR aims to get caste, ideology information: Prakash Ambedkar

Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi chief Prakash Ambedkar on Monday said the Centre's National Population Register exercise was an "evil design" aimed at ferreting out information about the caste and ideology of people in the country.

The Centre had, on December 24, approved Rs 3,941.35 crore for updating the National Population Register.

As per the government, the NPR is a list of "usual residents" of the country, with "usual resident" being defined as a person who has resided in a local area for the past six months or more, or a person who intends to reside in that area for the next six months or more.

"The motive of the government is to get caste and ideology information of every family. This is an evil design of the Narendra Modi government," Ambedkar told reporters here.

The National Population Register (NPR) was prepared in 2010 under the provisions of the Citizenship Act, 1955 and Citizenship Rules, 2003, and was subsequently updated in 2015 by seeding it with Aadhaar.

As per the website of Office of the Registrar General, and Census Commissioner, it has been decided to update the NPR along with the house-listing phase of Census 2021 during April to September 2020 in all the states and union territories except Assam.

The VBA chief also slammed the Centre for economic mis-governance and said it was selling high-value assets like Navratna companies to tide over a shortfall in revenue.