National Population Register will not be implemented in Kerala: CM Pinarayi Vijayan

The National Population Register will not be allowed to be implemented in Kerala, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan reiterated on Saturday.

Vijayan said on social media that ahead of the 2027 Census, the Kerala government has issued a fresh notification “ensuring no data for NPR is collected”, adding that the state’s Left government was “upholding our firm stand since 2019”.

The National Population Register is a list of all the usual residents of India. It was first prepared in 2010. In 2015, information in some fields, such as name, gender and date and place of birth, was updated.

On February 4, in a fresh gazette notification, the Kerala government reiterated that “all activities connected with the updation of National Population Register in the state stand suspended” with effect from December 20, 2019.

The notification had come three days after the Union government in its Budget on February 1 proposed to allocate Rs 6,000 crore for “Census, Survey and Statistics/Registrar General of India”.

The Budget notes said that the allocation includes “provisions for the office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India and various schemes of RGI [Registrar-General of India], including National Population Register (NPR) and expenditure on Census 2027”.

The notification also come after the Registrar General, which reports to the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, on January 22...

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