SHILLONG: The Meghalaya Government is mulling to restart the Biometric card enrolment for the National Population Register (NPR) – the ‘Aadhaar’ scheme, a unique identification project, which was put on hold after the Khasi Students’ Union objected to the same and halted the enrolment process last year.
Speaking to The Shillong Times, Principal Secretary Census Operation & NPR, P.W. Ingty, said the department has asked the East Khasi Hills Deputy Commissioner to get a new schedule for the enrolment process which will begin from Shillong.
The KSU had halted the enrolment process with the argument that it wanted mass mobilization on the topic and wanted the Government to verification measures while enrolling citizens in the scheme.
According to Ingty, the department has conducted a lot of awareness programmes on the scheme among the masses.
He further said that the department has put a clause where local institutions will help in identification and verification of genuine citizens during the enrolment process. The logic behind NPR is the fact that there is a genuine problem to identify Indian Citizens from Non Citizens of India residing in the Indian Territory due to illegal immigration from across the border and a clear picture of who claims to be Indian Citizens can be seen through the NPR.
This implementation of NPR will then pave a way to accurately determine the citizenship of all usual residents in the Indian Territory through implementation of the National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC) where names and details of non-Indian Citizens, which include illegal immigrants, will not appear in the NRIC.
It may be mentioned that NPR is a ‘Register’ of usual residents of the country implemented under provisions of The Citizenship Act, 1955 and The Citizenship Rules, 2003.