New Delhi: The Home Ministry is hoodwinking people on the dreaded all-India level National Register of Citizens (NRC). It accuses the opposition parties of mixing up the just enacted Citizenship (Amendment) Act with the NRC.
Its claim is also false that the Act has nothing to do with the Indians of any religion. The truth is otherwise. The recent amendments to grant citizenship to the refugees from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh may not affect the Indians directly but the Indians are affected from the Citizenship Act amended in 2003 during the NDA government led by Atal Behari Vajpayee.
It is this amendment in 2003 that put the NRC on the statute. Even then Home Minister P Chidambaram in the UPA government tried to push it but with a different name of the National Population Register (NPR).
The nationwide agitations going on for over a week are not only against the citizenship act but also against the NRC as the latter would particularly affect the Indians who are unable to establish their citizenship.
The government has tried to defuse the controversy by claiming that the rules for NRC are not yet framed. However, the truth is that the rules were formulated way back in 2003 after the Citizenship Act was amended.
The NRC was included in the amendment of the Citizenship Act in 2003 that led to notification of the NRC in January 2004 and it came into effect from December 2004. As such, the government does not require to bring a separate law in Parliament to enforce NRC. The NRC rules are in place since 2003 and so the government can kick off the exercise of registering the citizens any day without requiring any other formality.
It was not only incorporated in the law during the first NDA government but even the UPA government followed it for the purpose of the national security, Chidambaram continuously campaigning for what he called NPR. The nomenclature does not matter as to whether it is NRC or NPR.
