Union Cabinet approves National Population Register

The Union Cabinet on Tuesday approved over Rs 8,500 crore for updating the National Population Register, officials said.

The updating exercise is to commence from April next year.

The NPR is a list of "usual residents" of the country. A "usual resident" is defined for the purposes of NPR as a person who has resided in a local area for the past six months or more or a person who intends to reside in that area for the next six months or more.

The data for National Population Register was collected in 2010 along with the house-listing phase of Census of India 2011.

The data was updated in 2015 by conducting door-to-door survey.

The digitisation of the updated information has been completed.

Now it has been decided to update the National Population Register along with the house-listing phase of Census 2021 during April to September 2020 in all the states/union territories except Assam, according to the website of the Office of the Registrar General, and Census Commissioner.

A gazette notification to this effect was issued in August this year.

The NPR will be prepared at the local (village/sub-Town), sub-district, district, state and national level under provisions of the Citizenship Act 1955 and the Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003.

It is mandatory for every usual resident of India to register in the NPR.

The objective of the NPR is to create a comprehensive identity database of every usual resident in the country.

The database would contain demographic as well as biometric particulars.