Kerala issues order to block National Population Register in state after Union Budget allocation

The Union Budget presented last Sunday said, under “Census, Survey and Statistics/Registrar General of India (RGI)”, Rs 6,000 crore has been allocated, of which Rs 218 crore is capital expenditure. The Budget describes this allocation as including “provisions for the office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India and various schemes of RGI, including National Population Register (NPR) and expenditure on Census, 2027”.

Referring to the latest notification against NPR, a communication from the Kerala Chief Minister’s Office said in 2019 that the state had ordered to stop all procedures related to implementing the NPR along with the Census.

“It is the professed policy of the state government that NPR will not be implemented in Kerala at any cost. Since the Census is slated to be conducted from next year, there are strong rumours that NPR will also be held along with that. The new order reaffirming the government’s stand against the NPR was issued against this background,” it said.

It said the order was issued by upholding the government’s “unequivocal stand” against NPR. Kerala’s was the first state Assembly in the country to pass a resolution against CAA. The state government had also moved the Supreme Court against the Union government, arguing that CAA was unconstitutional.