The NPR was first prepared in 2010 and updated in 2015 by collecting information on all residents of the country.

The contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Act, Setalvad said, was earlier put on hold because of Covid and massive protests across the country and was soon going to be implemented as part of the Narendra Modi government’s efforts to polarise voters ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.

She said the CAA-NRC-NPR were all linked.

Last week, Union home minister Amit Shah had said the CAA would be notified and implemented before the upcoming general election.

The NPR was mandated through Rules to the Citizenship Act, 1955, in 2003. The 2010 NPR included the collection of biometric data, which was incorporated into the Aadhaar database.

Setalvad said the 2003 Rules nowhere mention that the NPR must be conducted periodically but in 2015, fields such as name, gender, date and place of birth, place of residence and father’s and mother’s name were updated and Aadhaar, mobile and ration card numbers were collected.

“The home ministry is now updating the NPR to incorporate the changes due to birth, death and migration. This clearly shows it is a backdoor exercise to collect documented data on vulnerable citizens which may thereafter be used by the State to declare their citizenship doubtful,” she said.

Abhijit Mitra, a member of Lokvidya Jan Andolan in Calcutta, said the government’s motive of collecting citizens’ demographic and biometric data was suspicious. “The whole exercise is not transparent and is aimed at targetting minority communities.”

He said the 21 questions under the NPR, which the home ministry declared to be voluntary, were seen as threatening privacy, leading to surveillance and further disenfranchisement of citizens through the NRC.

Mumbai-based activist Javed Anand said the CAA-NPR-NRC had been part of the BJP-RSS agenda to polarise voters along religious lines to win elections by diverting attention from the real issues — price rise, the sad state of healthcare, education and employment.

“They have been claiming to make India a Hindu Rashtra. What we have been witnessing now is an alarming state of affiars in the country. Every other day we read about mosques being demolished and goons hurling saffron flags on churches,” he said.

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