On Friday, PK Chakraborty, the director of census operations, said that a team of nearly 11,000 people will be deployed in the North-Eastern state of Tripura for the collection of National Population Register (NPR) data.
There will be a total of 9062 enumerators, 1556 supervisors, 9 principal census officers, and 16 master trainers.
The data collection process will commence from May 16 and continue until June 29. During this phase, housing data will be collected only through mobile apps, assured the Chief secretary of the state Manoj Kumar.
The paper schedule is to be used in hilly areas with poor internet connectivity and later uploaded on the mobile application. The real census will, however, begin next year.
The NPR questionnaire will include details of individuals such as name, age, place of birth, nationality, educational qualifications, parents’ details, phone number, government-issued licenses, permanent residential proof, gender, marital status and so on.
The NPR data was first collected as a part of the 2011 Census between 2010-2011 under the Congress government. It is a database of all “usual residents of India.” The usual residents are defined as people staying in a local area for 6 months or more. They also include people who are willing to stay in that area for the following months or more. The Union Government in December had sanctioned an amount of ₹3,941 crores for the process.
Despite the Centre clarifying on multiple occasions that the NPR and National Register of Citizens (NRC) are two distinct exercises, the Congress party and the left-liberal jamaat had left no stone unturned in casting aspersions about the same. The Maha Vikas Aghadi said that it was seeking legal opinion for opting out of NPR. Several other states have warned against not implementing the NRC, CAA, and NPR at various points in time.
The scare-mongering did not stop at states like Maharashtra asserting that they do not wish to implement a mandatory pratice by the centre. There were dangerous assertions being made by the usual suspects in order to scare people and create discord as far as the NPR is concerned. Recently, ultra-Left-wing propandist Yogendra Yadav had spread fantastical lies about the NPR.
Amidst a littany of dangerous lies, in a video published on February 10, the psephologist turned activist-cum-politician made imaginary links among census, NPR, NRC, CAA and detention centres, and urged people to oppose them.
In the video, Yogendra Yadav says that in a few months’ time, census enumerators will start visiting houses to collect data. Along with regular census data, they will also ask for details like Aadhaar card number, driving licence details etc. After that, government officials will analyse that data secretly, and put D, which means doubtful, in front of the name of some people. This means they are doubtful citizens, and officials will mark this if people were not able to provide correct details like the birthplace of their parents, Aadhaar card etc, he alleges.
Yogendra Yadav says that after this, people with D with their name will start getting letters from the government, asking to prove their citizenship.
This, while the government had clarified repeatedly that no papers would be asked during the NPR exercise.
The same lies were also peddled by propagandist Arundhati Roy who had said that if the officiials ask for names during the NPR exercise, people should mislead and give false names like ‘Ranga-Billa’.
