In its latest annual report, the Home ministry emphasizes the need to update the National Population Register (NPR) database across the country, except Assam, since the government is likely to bring a bill to amend the Registration of Births and Deaths Act for centralized data management. For each family and individual, demographic and other particulars are to be collected to include changes due to births, deaths, and migrations.
In its annual report for 2021-22, the ministry says NPR updates and other field activities were postponed due to Covid-19. The NPR database will be updated using a three-pronged approach. In addition, residents will be able to update their data after following some authentication protocols, and NPR data will be updated in both paper and mobile formats. During the exercise, everyone’s demographic and other info will be collected/updated. During the update, no documents or biometrics will be taken,” adding that the Centre already approved Rs 3,941 crore.
Including the MHA, all authorities granted 1,414 citizenship certificates between April 1, 2021, and December 31, 2021. According to the report, 1,120 were granted citizenship by registration under Section 5 and 294 by naturalization under Section 6.
According to the annual report, the Central government has delegated its authority to grant Indian citizenship by registration or naturalisation to 29 districts and nine states for Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Christians, and Parsis from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan. According to the report, the delegation (of powers) will speed up the process of granting Indian citizenship to the category mentioned above of migrants.
Two thousand four hundred and forty-nine members of minority communities from the three neighboring countries received long-term visas in the last year; 2,193 were from Pakistan, 237 were from Afghanistan, and nine were from Bangladesh.
The Supreme Court directed the National Register of Citizens (NRC), Assam, to publish the hard copies of the supplementary list of inclusions and family-wise list of exclusions on August 31, 2019. In the final NRC, 3,11,21,004 people were found eligible, and 19,06,657 were ineligible.
