NEW DELHI: The government has not taken a decision to prepare the National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC), the Union Home Ministry informed Parliament on Tuesday.
This is significant, given that NRC has been top of BJP’s poll agenda and Union Home Minister Amit Shah has promised to implement it before the 2024 general polls.
Information regarding the Home Ministry not having taken a decision on this was shared in the lower House by Minister of State, Home Affairs, Nityanand Rai.
He added the government has decided to update the National Population Register (NPR) under the Citizenship Act, 1955, with the first phase of Census 2021. Rai said data collection for NPR has been delayed by the pandemic.
In response to a question about the remedies available to a person not satisfied with the outcome of decisions made during the NRC exercise in Assam, Rai said such persons may appeal before designated Foreigners Tribunals within 120 days from the order.
Since those excluded from NRC in Assam are yet to exhaust all possible legal remedies, question of their nationality verification does not arise at this stage, Rai added.
He also said demographic and other particulars of each family and individual are to be updated or collected during the exercise of updating the NPR.
Assam is the only state where the NRC exercise has been done so far. When the final list of the NRC was published in 2019, a total of 19.06 lakh of the 3.3 crore applicants were excluded.
In October 2019, soon after winning an unexpectedly high 18 seats from West Bengal in the Lok Sabha polls, Shah in a rally in Kolkata had promised to implement NRC in the state and “throw out the infiltrators”.