Census But No National Population Register (NPR) in Assam

STAFF REPORTER

GUWAHATI: The Registrar General of India (RGI) will carry out the Census operation in Assam in 2021 even as it has decided to keep the State excluded from the National Population Register (NPR) exercise in the same year.

Barring Assam, the NPR exercise will be undertaken across the country in between April 1 and September 30 in 2020. Sources said Assam will be excluded from the NPR exercise in view of the National Registrar of Citizens (NRC) update.

“The RGI will carry out only the Census operation in Assam. The NPR exercise will not be conducted due to NRC update. Both Census and NPR exercises will conducted in other States of the country,” Deputy Director General of Directorate of Census Operations, Assam Bharati Chanda told The Sentinel.

The NPR exercise is different from the decennial Census. It is a Register of usual residents of the country. It is being prepared at the local (Village/sub-Town), sub-District, District, State and National level under provisions of the Citizenship Act 1955 and the Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003.

It is mandatory for every usual resident of India to register in the NPR. A usual resident is defined for the purposes of NPR as a person who has resided in a local area for the past 6 months or more or a person who intends to reside in that area for the next 6 months or more.

The objective of the NPR is to create a comprehensive identity database of every usual resident in the country. The database would contain demographic as well as biometric particulars.

Recording biometric and family-tree details of Indian citizens under the NPR will be conducted in September 2020, a government notification said.

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