Visakhapatnam: HRF demands AP, TS to pass resolution rejecting NPR

Visakhapatnam: The Human Rights Forum (HRF) demands that both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana governments pass resolutions in their respective Assemblies rejecting the National Population Register (NPR) exercise in its totality and not limit themselves to reverting to its 2010 version.

The NPR, National Register of Citizens (NRC) and Citizenship (Amendment) Act are inextricably linked legally as the NPR amounts to an initialisation of an NRC, it said.

"Time and again, Union home minister Amit Shah has made it clear that the people would do well to 'understand the chronology' of the NPR-NRC-CAA process. In Parliament on March 12, Amit Shah was lying brazenly when he asserted that the NPR process will not render any person as 'D' or 'Doubtful' in respect of their citizenship. Sub-rule 4 of Rule 4of the Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003, which invoked NRIC, clearly states: During the verification process, particulars of such individuals, whose citizenship is doubtful, shall be entered by the Local Registrar with appropriate remark in the Population Register for further enquiry and in case of doubtful Citizenship, the individual or the family shall be informed in a specified proforma immediately after the verification is over," the rights organisation said in a statement on Friday. HRF said that the NPR was a survey exercise that collects data for an NRC.

HRF, AP and Telangana coordination committee members V S Krishna and S Jeevan Kumar said it was evident that the danger that this poses would not be limited to the minorities alone but a whole class of disadvantaged people in the country.

HRF demanded that the two state governments follow the example of Kerala, reject the NPR and pass resolutions in Assembly, stating in unambiguous terms that they would not implement it in their states.