Under the Citizenship Act: Necessary To Give National Identity card To everyone the government can issue the card
Every Citizen Will Get A National Identity Card: The Government Can Issue The Card: After the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the voter list was conducted before the upcoming assembly elections in Bihar, there is a discussion going on across the country about what should be the identity card for Indian citizenship should be or which certificate issued by the government should be presented as proof of citizenship.
This issue was also raised in Parliament on Tuesday, August 5. After this, the government informed the Lok Sabha that there is a provision in the Citizenship Act, 1955, that the central government will compulsorily register every citizen of India and issue them a national identity card.
Trinamool Congress MP Mala Roy had raised a question in the House in this regard, asking about the details of the card, which, according to the court, is an acceptable identity proof as an Indian citizen.
Minister of State for Home, Bandi Sanjay Kumar, in a written reply, said, “The Citizenship Act, 1955 (as amended in 2004) empowers the Central Government to compulsorily register every citizen of India and issue National Identity Cards to them. The procedure for this was laid down in 1955. National Identity Cards can be issued to those citizens whose details are recorded in the National Register of Indian Citizens or National Register of Citizens (NRC).”
NRC exercise conducted only in Assam
Assam is the only state in the country where the NRC exercise has been started, but the final register has not been published yet as the state government has challenged the draft NRC published in 2019, which excluded 19 lakh residents out of the 3.29 crore applicants.
No decision to update the NPR in the upcoming census
The Government of India has not taken any decision to update the National Population Register (NPR) even during the upcoming Census 2027. The NPR is the first step towards the NRC and was first compiled in 2010. Also, the data was collected during the first phase of the 2011 Census – called the House Listing and Housing (HLO) Schedule. The NPR database was updated in 2015-16, which contains details of 119 crore residents.
Following the protests over the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and NRC in 2019-20, the Central Government informed the Parliament that as of now, the Government has not taken any decision to prepare NRC at the national level.
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