Hours after Prime Minister Narendra Modi handed over the charge of Home ministry for a second consecutive term, Amit Shah on Monday said the government will “continue to accelerate and strengthen security initiatives”. The first task before Shah is the implementation of three new criminal laws — Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, and Bharatiya Sakshya Act. In February, the Centre had issued three gazette notifications that the new laws will be effective from July 1. In a post on X, Shah expressed his gratitude to PM Modi for reassigning him the charge of Home and Cooperation departments. “In Modi 3.0, the MHA will continue to accelerate and strengthen security initiatives and introduce new approaches to realise PM Modi's vision of a secure Bharat. Under the astute leadership of Modi Ji, the Ministry of Cooperation will remain committed to empowering farmers and villages with the vision of 'Sahakaar Se Samriddhi’.” Decisions on the National Population Register (NPR), Census, restoration of statehood in Jammu and Kashmir, and solving the ethnic conflict in Manipur are other issues that require the government’s attention. The work of NPR updation got stopped due to the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic and all the field activities got postponed. “For updating the NPR database, a three-pronged approach will be adopted. It will include self-updating wherein residents will update their own data after following some authentication protocols, updating of NPR data in paper format, and mobile mode. The demographic and other particulars of each family and individual are to be collected/updated during the exercise. No documents or biometrics will be collected during the update,” an official said, adding that the Centre has already approved Rs 3,941 crore for the purpose. Since the announcement of the Census exercise and its deferment due to the pandemic in 2020, the deadline for freezing of jurisdictional boundaries has been extended multiple times. The Census enumeration scheduled to take place in 2021 has been pushed till October 2024. “The Centre is coordinating with all the security agencies to smoothly conduct the Assembly elections in J&K this year,” the official said.
