By Aakar Patel / National Herald
The Union government is passing legislation to make Aadhaar compulsory for births and deaths. If the bill should become law, it will feed into the National Population Register. This in turn will revive the National Register of Citizens. The last time the government attempted this, it was pushed back by the CAA protests in 2019–20.
In April 2020, the government was to begin the NPR exercise manually. This would have needed the enumerators—meaning government workers, teachers, clerical staff, and so on—to go door-to-door and question people in 25 crore households. This attempt was given up after the protests did not end. They did not end because the prime minister gave no assurance that the NRC would not be implemented.
He said merely that it had not been discussed yet. This was insufficient to satisfy people who believe that what happened in Assam would happen nationwide. Meaning that people would be marked as doubtful citizens, lose their voting rights and begin a process that goes through a National Register of Citizens list, then a Foreigner Tribunal and ends in a detention centre.
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