National Population Register is part of the census aiming to create a list of residents in India. The difference between the original version and the one introduced in 2019 is it includes questions to trace the resident’s parentage.
National Register of Citizens looks to identify all the country’s citizens established under Citizenship Act of 1955. This was first initiated to sift the illegal immigrants in Assam. However was able to identify 1.5m people as immigrants as against an originally estimated 6m immigrants. This number will further likely to reduce.
Off this 1.5m Assamese identified immigrants a significant portion up to 1m of them were Hindus therefore the government introduced CAA as a patchwork to retain Hindus and throw out the Bangladeshi Muslims or worse hold them in detention camps.
The CAA actually stated that any Hindu and people of a few other minority religions who entered the country prior to 2014 will be granted citizenship. For all other residents eligibility requires you spend a minimum of 11 years to apply for citizenship. So even if you are a Hindu if you have entered the country post 2014 those immigrants will have to leave the country or held in the detention center.
What’s the problem with all of this?
Most residents in India don’t have documentation to prove their citizenship or for that matter even place of birth.
Why is everyone freaking out?
The home minister made a statement that CAA and NRC will be carried out across the entire country.
This means, when read literally, in the absence of documentation all Indians will not make the NRC. CAA could then be applied to retain Hindus and other “religious minorities” provided they have documentation to prove they or their parents were in India prior to 2014. This could be identified via the amended NPR, especially with the introduction of the additional question that traces the parentage.
This leaves all the Muslims who can’t prove their citizenship out of the NRC. Furthermore multiple detention centers were being built in BJP states. This is triggering the fear and paranoia.
Is the worst likely to manifest?
This is botched law making and even worse communication. It’s unrealistic to hold immigrants in Detention Centers at such scale across all of India. It’s impractical to start a citizenship identification process in a country that has so many destitute citizens, an estimated 230m below poverty line, with little clothing and shelter leave alone documentation to prove citizenship. It’s practically impossible to fairly arbitrate to establish their citizenship. In short this is a political gimmick that went horribly wrong.
AVALUECREATOR 